The saga of Tiger Woods -- and not only his -- is a classic, pop-cultural case of the sexual tables turned. It's a story becoming increasingly familiar.
His alleged affairs, text messages, and voice mails are, as of this writing, still to be confirmed or authenticated, but they point to the quintessential tale of this age -- that of the great man brought low via mobile media.
Tiger, Tiger, texting is not too bright. He now has fallen -- along with Gov. Corzine, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Sen. John Ensign (R., Nev.), and even Finnish politician Ilkka Kanerva -- into a messaging ambush of his own making.
Cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubb, who says she had a 31-month affair with Woods, has provided Us Weekly alleged text messages from him. She says she has more than 300.
Grubb has also provided a voice mail she says is from Woods. In it, a worried man's voice says, "Hey, it's, uh, it's Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Um, can you please, uh, take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone. And, uh, may be calling you. . . . You've got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. All right. Bye."
Tracy Quan, Daily Beast expert on infidelity and author of Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, says with some sympathy, "It's like we're back in the 19th century: 'Please! Burn my letters!' "
Web site TMZ reported Thursday that Elin Nordegren, Woods' wife, discovered him texting nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel, said to be a Woods mistress, shortly before the famed Woods traffic accident. Uchitel, represented by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, denied such allegations and called a news conference, but then suddenly canceled. Technology has changed the nature of the illicit affair. It's astonishing, frankly, that people in the public eye would ever commit their passions to cyberspace at all, ever again, in light of what has happened with e-mails and text messages lately. David Crystal, author of Language and the Internet and other studies of texting, writes by e-mail that "it's amazing indeed that people can be so naive about e-communication. As I say . . . slightly tongue in cheek, never send an e-message you wouldn't be prepared to defend in a court of law!" Last year, Kilpatrick, the Detroit mayor, got snarled in a sex scandal when a few of the thousands of messages sent between him and chief of staff Christine Beatty in 2002 and 2003 somehow landed in the lap of the Detroit Free Press. "I've been dreaming all day about having you all to myself for three days," he texted her. "Relaxing, laughing, talking, sleeping and making love." And apparently not bothered by the fact he'd sent these texts on a city-issued pager. Or that by city directive, messages via city media are "not considered to be personal or private." Political downfall, jail time, and fines ended his tale.
There's an aspect of tragedy to all this. Like Gulliver in Lilliput, the great man -- so infatuated, so dumb, or so full of hubris it never occurs to him that his every tweet, text, and e-mail may be used against him -- watches the million silken ropes of the media lasso him and pull him down. The Trap of Texting This is not new technology. E-mail is about 27 years old, person-to-person texting 16. Yet smart, powerful, prominent men in amorous situations seem unable to understand the brute facts. As in e-mail is forever. (Even if you melt down your computer, your e-mail is on someone else's hard drive, too.) As in text messages and voice mail are not secure. Not. Secure. Corzine has had many a squirming moment because of e-mails (745 pages' worth) between himself and former girlfriend and union leader Karla Katz. In May 2008, a judge ordered the e-mails released. They've been the subject of a court battle ever since. Sanford, now battling the South Carolina legislature to keep his job and with wife Jenny to keep his marriage, sent delirious, poetic e-mails to his Argentine lover, Maria Belen Chapur: "How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. . . . It was all safe. Where we are is not. . . . I wish I could wish it away." He probably wishes it even more, now that the State newspaper of Columbia, S.C., has published several passionate e-mails.
Ensign has plummeted from grace in Nevada after discovery of his affair with Cindy Hampton, wife of his chief of staff, Doug Hampton. Hampton the Husband intercepted a text message from Ensign on Hampton the Wife's cell phone: "How wonderful it is. . . . Scared, but excited." Confronted, the illicit pair swore they'd stop. They didn't, evidently. Months later, Husband, understandably vigilant, borrowed Ensign's cell phone one day and found out his wife was still listed under the pseudonym Aunt Judy. Ensign is 51. He was in his mid-20s when e-mail went global. Such slovenly management of his messages is thus surprising. Quan says, "He's too young to be that clueless about texting." Kanerva of Finland busily texted nude dancer Johanna Tukiainen 200 times within one month, suggesting threesomes with her sister. Yep, they got published in a tabloid. (This was Kanerva's second texting scandal. In 2005, his addressee was nude model Marika Fingerroos.) Kanerva's poll numbers went up, but he was forced to give up his post as foreign minister. Intimacy and E-media There seems to be a disconnect between the way we think about intimate communication and the facts of mobile texting. Immediate and quick, texting can seem just-me-and-you. But again and again, texters' texts get all over the place.
Quan says, "We want relationships to be based on spontaneity and trust -- for example, 'I trust you to keep our messages private.' So when we're in intimate relationships, we tend not to set formal rules of communication. Setting rules might be a good idea, but almost nobody ever does it, because that's robotic and not how relationships work. It's very unusual for people even to think of that at the beginning of a relationship." But surely the brute facts of texting make such spontaneity and trust seem not the best idea. Money and Sex As for the cocktail waitresses or restaurant hostesses or female underlings so often involved, perhaps all the professed shock is no longer believable. Laura Maria Agustin, an anthropologist of sex, says Western society long has condoned a certain amount of legalized sex for money in the very dating game itself. Via Facebook message, Agustin writes that "dating in the traditional sense of men paying for drinks and expecting something afterward is the clearest example of money and sex coexisting without society getting into a flap." It's somehow appropriate that Woods' apology to the world Wednesday came via the Web, on his personal site: "I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means." Perhaps he is finally starting to get the message.
