Usually when someone gets in trouble and the defense conjures up images of the defendant’s father, the father’s usually a derelict, drunk, or some other deadlier definition of “deadbeat.”
But playing the “dead” dad card in the case of Tiger Woods – Male Whore? Wow. Ballsy, Nike. Motherf*ckin’ ballsy.
C-HO: Corporate Mesothelioma Rating: 4 out of 10 – for playing the “dead dad” card
I’ve seen this movie before. If you play the “dead dad,” Obi-Wan Kenobi-advice-from-the-grave move, you better be able to control the story. Down to the ticket sales, the smell of the popcorn, and the credits at the end.
This is why the strategy is seldom, if ever, attempted in the court of public opinion.
If his mother worked two jobs and raised him on his own, then there’d be a story to use. If his loving country grandmother who helped shaped him in his country youth would have recently passed, then you could put him on a country road at sundown, leaning on a wooden fence and staring out into the fields where he grew into a man as he painstakingly learned to till the land by hand.
But the memory of a stern, disciplining, military father from his two-parent home who helped provide him with a Stanford education…
What Twitter-happy intern thought this angle would work? Social media only passes around so much sh*t, and that usually has to come from Chris Brogan or Seth Godin. Nike should gave them a call.
In an age of whodunnit, skeptical, people-are-evil television shows dominated by CSI, NCIS, and Law & (lack of) Order – with other shows like Burn Notice, Castle and the like filling in the house – conjuring the spirit of Tiger Woods’ dad is only gonna make people who give a sh*t question the character of Earl Woods.
If there isn’t already a conspiracy theory…
How long do you think it’ll be before we start hearing stories of Earl Woods, playboy?
Hopefully, Earl’s playing a friendly game of poker with James Jordan and can’t see this. If he does, Nike better start expecting some Jacob Marley, middle-of-the-night visits from big Earl.
(photo credit: capt madd matt via Flickr)
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