Tiger Woods at the Masters Bigger Than Iraq Invasion and American Christmas

Tom Scocca: What is a “media event”?

Tom: “CBS News boss: Tiger’s return will be second-biggest media event of last 10 or 15 years.”

Tom: “’I think the first tournament Tiger Woods plays again, wherever it is, will be the biggest media event other than the Obama inauguration in the past 10 or 15 years,’ says CBS News president Sean McManus. Will his on-air announcers mention the scandal? ‘I don’t think there is a lot of reason to dwell on what has happened in the past because it is one of the most exploited and overexposed stories in recent memory.’”

Choire Sicha: Whoa. Sean McManus. The good news is that this “media event” will take place at the Masters, in three short weeks!

Tom: I can’t really evaluate the truth or falsehood of this fairly false-sounding claim without knowing what a “media event” is.

Choire: Well? “Thing that the media covers”??

Tom: Does it mean “something for which people know in advance to send cameras”? Unlike 9/11, which did happen within this timeframe of 10–15 years? But people did know in advance that we were invading Iraq, and they sent camera crews there for that. You see my confusion?

Choire: I think you’re confusing the invasion of Iraq with the “Mission Accomplished” press conference?

Tom: No, we had lots of footage of bombs and tanks and stuff.

Choire: Did we? I can barely remember.

Tom: You’re confusing the present-day coverage of Iraq with the initial coverage of Iraq. We got live coverage of them struggling to slowly pry down that statue of Saddam. It was the only thing on TV.

Choire: Oh, when they stole all the paintings??? Right!

Tom: Weeks and weeks. But that was not a “media event,” which is fine, because God forbid it should be compared to Tiger Woods playing golf. Still, then, why is the inauguration, which was an event-event, classified with the golf? And if pre-scheduling is what makes the difference, that would mean that O.J.’s Bronco ride was not a media event.

Choire: Well the inauguration has always been an event for display, but however, I think he’s not talking about the inauguration. I think he means the actual event of the election?

Tom: He said “inauguration.”

Choire: True he did! It’s his word and he’s welcome to it. [*]

Tom: You know what? If it takes this much work to try to figure out what he means by “media event,” I’m going to go ahead and say he’s full of shit. Tiger playing golf again is like the first episode of “Jon and Kate Plus 8” after they got caught cheating on each other.

Choire: It’s less of a notable event even than a coronation — at least when there’s a change in power, it’s motivated by other forces than “Oh hey, I think I’ll go out and do that thing I used to do every day again.”

Tom: And that is nothing at all like the actual transfer of executive power in the world’s wealthiest and best-armed nation. I am assuming that you have avoided the STR8 INTERNETZ enough to have missed the whole thing where Bill “The Sports Guy” Simmons declared that Tiger Woods’ comeback was going to be tougher than Muhammad Ali’s was.

Choire: I understood 6 of those words!

Tom: Lucky you. Simmons is a guy who built himself into a brand and got bought by ESPN as a regular-fellow sports analyst, which is to say he mixes sweeping, sometimes-interesting judgments about sports with middle-of-the-road pop-culture gags and a fascinating part-submerged and quasi-aspirational fear of women and nonwhites. Because that is how Guys are.

Choire: Well I know he is much-beloved by some friends, who consider him God-like. I still don’t know who he is!

Tom: He says things about sports that are probably worth saying, and somebody could write a pretty good dissertation about what he deliberately and accidentally says about race and gender. But this thing he said about Ali and Tiger was incredible. The whole sports-reading Internet did a prolonged spit-take. And then he did a bunch of Googling or skimming of history books and tried to write a follow-up piece defending his insane claim that Tiger has it tougher than Ali did, which boiled down to the notion that today’s athlete faces “pressure” unlike anything anyone could have imagined in the old days.

Tom: Eventually, I figured out that by “pressure,” he meant “hype.” The way George W. Bush kept saying “freedom” when he meant “us.”

Tom: Probably that’s what Sean McManus is talking about, too. But Sean McManus is making sure his announcers don’t compound the hype by talking about Tiger Woods’ ladyscandals. Bully for CBS.

Tom: I assume the CBS announcers will focus instead on Tiger Woods’ relationship with Dr. Anthony Galea, the HGH-toting medical man who also helped Alex Rodriguez get over his hip troubles last year.

Choire: I’m sure they will!

Tom: That is a story that has been sadly overshadowed by all this jabber about cocktail waitresses. It will be great to see CBS go hard after the real news.

Tom: Unless…you don’t suppose McManus is publicly promising Tiger Woods friendly treatment, to make sure that Woods returns to golf in time to give CBS boffo ratings for the Masters, do you?

Choire: I’m sure I wouldn’t know. It is obvious that he is planning vast wall-to-wall coverage of Tiger Woods with a golf club in hand.

Tom: Oh. Perhaps “media event” means “something we can sell ads against.” I can be slow sometimes.

Choire: Well, that’s a given. Spectacle is ad-worthy.

Tom: But not the spectacle of the Iraq invasion. Or the Bronco chase, even. It has to be a spectacle where there’s no leakage of bad feeling onto the advertisers.

Choire: Well you can’t interrupt a Bronco chase for commercial!

Tom: OK. Now I know what business CBS News boss Sean McManus is in.