Tacky Tiger ad marks cultural rock bottom

With all the bad things happening in the world right now, says Dave Zirin, it seems silly to get upset
over an advert. But the latest Nike ad featuring Tiger Woods just makes me "furious". The video
shows the philandering golfer staring gravely at the camera as he is admonished by the voice of his
dead father. "I want to find out what your thinking was," intones the recording of Karl Woods, who
died in 2006. "I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?" How "tacky"
can you get? It's bad enough that Tiger should conspire with Nike to exploit the memory of his
beloved father. But it's worse still that Tiger and Nike would regard the crisis in his private life as just
another opportunity "to sell us more swoosh-ladcn crap". This represents a new "cultural rock
bottom" for America. After the humiliating exposure of Tiger's serial adultery and the collapse of his
marriage, I really believed there would be a "showdown" inside his soul between the man and the
brand. His professed recommitment to his Buddhist faith and his family seemed genuine. But it seems
"there is no man, only brand. If he wants to dehumanise himself on his own time then more power
to him. But this ad dehumanises all of us."