Tiger Woods: The Luckiest Jerk on the Face of the Earth

Sexting-scandalized golfer couldn't have picked better enemies to help him keep his career rolling

Tiger Woods isn't lucky because he's rich and famous and a world-class athlete.

Tiger Woods is lucky because he's in the right profession (sports) and pitted against the right opponents (the media, cocktail waitresses) to insure that one bad P.R. week will remain just that: one bad P.R. week.

So, ignore the obligatory hand-wringing over whether Woods' career as a corporate pitchman is over and the naive talk about whether the public will forgive the man his "transgressions."

Tiger Woods is going to wear us out. And we're going to like it.

If most people had to pick sides—Tiger Woods versus the aforementioned scourges of society—most people would go with the guy who's never told them a story, much less pored them a drink. Americans may not like their public figures—and especially their male public figures—to have more sex than them (just ask poor Adam Lambert), but they tolerate that behavior far more than they respect their messengers and cocktail waitresses.

While Woods has held fire on the cocktail-waitressing community—and why bother doing otherwise, unless the gender and class scales tipped the other way when we were busy listening to Jamiee Grubbs' incoming messages—he has unloaded on the media in non-statement after non-statement.

Now, truth be told, Kirstie Alley's Twitter page has been stronger than Woods in making his case or, rather, in making the case that the cocktail waitress who sells out her married hookup for tabloid cash admittedly ain't no great shakes, but nobody's perfect. Obviously.

Overall, though, Woods is fortunate to have chosen just the right enemy.

If you want to get somebody to agree with you, then tell them how much you despise the Media (capital M, as in the Mafia). If you want to deflect attention from a fire-hydrant-smashing incident of public record, then tell them how much you despise the Media (capital M, as in Maleficent).

And, most of all, if you wish to live the life to which you are accostomed be sure to make your life in an industry ruled by the jock credo that says scoreboard is all that matters, and burnished in the broadcast booth by former jocks who may be all-too sympathetic to away-game rituals involving cocktail waitresses. (By the way, before he goes rogue again, will somebody please CC Jesper Parnevik on the next boys-will-be-boys memo?)

We'll save you the trouble now of hitting the cap-lock button: SCOREBOARD *IS* ALL THAT MATTERS, you scream. Fine. Fact is, you're right. Before Tiger Woods, there was Michael Jordan, as unappealing an icon outside the lines as there may be. (If you haven't had the displeasure, click right this way to watch Mr. Jordan scorch the Earth, his enemies and own children in his classy Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech.)

And while Jordan never faced the full TMZ that Woods is getting, he had his scuffles, and he ended up a hero. As long as from this point Woods' golf clubs are used only for golfing, their owner will probably end up the same way. No matter how many more sext messages are leaked. No matter how many more women come forward. No matter.

Some guys who get lucky are lucky that way.