video There's been no shortage of controversy in the news since South Park last aired in November, and as you might have been aware, Tiger Woods found himself at the center of much of it. It was inevitable show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker would take on the Tiger scandal at some point, so they got right to it last night, and delivered a classic, if by-the-book, South Park episode to kick off the show's 14th season. (more...)

Andrew Young certainly hopes so. The former John Edwards aide - who is admittedly leveraging all he can out of the former VP candidate's sex scandal with Rielle Hunter - is now starting to hint at other women Edwards may have been involved with. (more...)

video After serving over a year in office, Barack Obama effectively ignored Fox News, while appearing on nearly every other American television news outlet. That changed today when he sat down for an interview with Special Report host Bret Baier, and chatted about Health Care reform for roughly 17 minutes in a pre-taped segment. The sometimes combative tone of the interview stood in stark contrast to another taped package - the "walk and talk" segment between Baier and Obama - that was likely recorded in advance of the actual sit-down taping. While walking in the halls of the White House, Obama addressed foreign policy issues like Israel and Iran, and even gave a rather forgiving opinion on Tiger Woods. (more...)

The understatement for the first quarter of 2010 is that CBS Sports has had an okay start to 2010. First, its broadcast of Super Bowl XLV became the most watched television program in history. Then, it got to recharge the batteries through the month of February while the media world converged upon Vancouver - before setting up its annual domination of March through its broadcast of the NCAA tournament. Most people are dreaming about brackets this week and the least-productive Thursday and Friday in the American work calendar. But there's another spring event in the CBS Sports catalog that is going to be a spectacle: this April's Masters. Forget about all the normal stories about Augusta and what its history means to the sport. This year's event has the tease of Tiger Woods return as its big draw. (more...)

The stage is set for Tiger Woods return to golf, and he's doing it at a tournament that has "a tradition unlike any other." Woods said in a statement today he'll make his long-awaited return at the Masters on April 5, and CBS is bracing for huge ratings as a result. (more...)

The gossip blog Radar Online released an exclusive report suggesting - complete with vagrant links leading to "Top Ten Celebrity Mugshots" and the Bristol Palin child support paperwork - that the resignation of Chief Justice John Roberts from the Supreme Court is imminent. It took about fifteen minutes (and denials from the few news sources quick enough to pick it up) for them to be forced into retracting the statement, but in exchange for some political credibility Radar won an all-important link on the Drudge Report and a small mention on Fox News, besides the internet wildfire of links all through the political blogosphere. (more...)

video Psychologist Carl Jung called it synchronicity - the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner (thanks Wikipedia!) Not sure that this is a perfect example of that, but its certainly a weird coincidence: a storyline about sexual addiction on Yes, Dear -- the CBS sitcom now running in reruns on TBS --somehow worked in a throw away line about Tiger Woods and...sexual addiction? Now this would sort of make sense if Rachel Uchitel was attached to the show, but an IMDB search reveals no such evidence. (more...)

Criticizing the American public for the role its own immaturity plays in political gridlock is all the rage lately. Jacob Weisberg did it in Slate early last month, (rightly) pointing out it's unrealistic to expect government to tackle the biggest issues facing the country while also getting smaller. And Evan Thomas does it in the latest Newsweek, similarly blaming a "culture of entitlement." (Still, Weisberg and Thomas might allow that there's a bit more those in Washignton could be doing to work together and get things done.) But the most...interesting "cultural immaturity" critique also comes from this week's Newsweek, in the person of George Will. Will's argument: that men are getting more and more immature and less and less, well, manly. Now, Will might even be right about this, but his methods in making his point leave something to be desired. (more...)

If you spent the weekend caught up in tsunami or hockey fever, you may have missed the story in Golf Digest about Tiger Woods' seclusion following the revelation of his affairs. In the article, written by Jaime Diaz, the golf pro allegedly received phone calls of support from both former president Bill Clinton (which almost makes sense...) and our President Barack Obama. Except at least half of that never happened. (more...)

poll According to this month's CBS/Vanity Fair poll 22% of those asked would be willing to forgive Tiger Woods his bad behavior (no word on whether Elin was one of the polled). This may seem like a low number, but Tiger should perhaps breathe a sigh of relief: he polls well compared to, say, John Edwards who only got five percent of the forgiveness vote. Edwards meanwhile can take some itty bitty tiny comfort in the fact that he is more forgivable than both Roman Polanski and Chris Brown. Yes, very small comfort. Eternal bad boy Charlie Sheen falls somewhere in the middle at 12%. (more...)

When Golf Digest had that major whoops...putting a cover out of President Barack Obama with PGA winner Tiger Woods under the caption, "10 Tips Obama Could Take From Tiger" right in the middle of the media unearthing all of Tiger Woods' scandalous affairs, we could chalk it up to bad timing. But now the magazine thinks it's on to something...did the president really call Tiger during the blizzard of bad p.r. and offer words of encouragement? (more...)

ratings Tiger Woods' apology Friday morning was broadcast on dozens of networks - but the top-rated network was a non-sports outlet. Fox News had the most viewers, even topping ESPN. Here's a breakdown of how the networks fared for Tiger coverage. (more...)

Tiger Woods is safe from no one! Last Friday even Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn took aim at the beleagured Woods when she walked into a Time interview shortly after the golf mega-star's bizarro press conference. Listen up SNL, Vonn appears to be pitching you! (more...)

video But no, the joke wasn't in the "package" part. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell certainly has a way with words: This morning on Fox News Sunday, the GOP Senate Minority Leader spoke out against Obama's economic stimulus package, and even tried to...make a joke? Maybe? We're really not quite sure what his comments about Tiger Woods and John Edwards having a better year than the stimulus package were supposed to mean. Does the economy have a sex problem or secret love-child that we should know about? What? (more...)

your moment of glenn This is going to be interesting. Which Glenn Beck is going to show up to deliver the key note address tomorrow at CPAC. No one seems to know, including Glenn Beck. Will it be the Glenn Beck who rails against Van Jones, secret Obama administration Maoists, and defends Tea Partiers against unwarranted claims of violence? Or will it be the Glenn Beck that that has spent the last two days seemingly distancing himself from both the Tea Parties and the Conservative movement as a whole. (more...)

Looks like someone took those complaints of being "too boring" a little too seriously. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who has been presumably prodded by his dismal ratings in 2012 Republican presidential candidate polls to find himself a personality, tried to make a joke in his speech at CPAC earlier today. About Tiger Woods. More specifically, praising his wife Elin Nordegren for smashing the back of his SUV to pieces, and labeling her a role model for conservatives to follow in their approach to big government. Since it's CPAC, the crowd burst into an uproarious fit of laughter and applause, and, to be fair, the soundbite is hilarious, but probably unintentionally so. Pawlenty told the crowd:

"At this very hour... a big event is happening in the USA: Tiger Woods is holding his press conference at 11 o'clock eastern. I think we can learn a lot from that situation, not from Tiger, but from his wife. So, she said, 'I've had enough.' She said, 'no more.' I think we should take a page out of her playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country."

It will probably take the left about three hours to start spinning this as a promotion of domestic violence and trying to brand Pawlenty as a violently unstable train wreck waiting to happen. If they succeed, it will be his only personality trait, so it's probably worth a shot. The more likely scenario here, however, is that Pawlenty knows his audience and is becoming increasingly aware of how little he stands out on the national scene. When you're competing for attention at a conference showcasing Glenn Beck, Dick Cheney, and this guy, off-color is often spot-on. And in the realm of possible ways to incite a rabid crowd to violence, this one ranks fairly low, if only for being about golf. Watch Pawlenty deliver his barn-burner of a joke below:

video Tiger Woods press conference wasn't the only province of awkwardness - the run-up to his public apology also brought some odd moments. Namely, Fox News James Rosen made a strange analogy when he compared the Thanksgiving night incident in which Tiger's secret life began to unravel with the Watergate break-in that lead to the resignation of then President Richard Nixon. Huh? (more...)

video In a slow, deliberate, 12-minute address by Tiger Woods, one of the greatest athletes of all time, he apologized and shed some light on his future plans. It began with a slow walk alone to a podium in front of a blue curtain ("It looks like a magic show," said Rick Reilly on ESPN) and ended with a hug from his mom who was sitting in the front row of the small audience. Here's what happened in between, with video of the statement. (more...)

video At today's press conference, Tiger Woods made specific note of how he lost what he'd been taught having been raised Buddhist by his mother. When news of Tiger Woods affairs broke, some questioned his faith and spirituality, most notably, Fox News analyst Brit Hume actively suggested that Tiger would be better off forsaking Buddhism for the more “redemptive” and “forgiving” Christianity. What do we know about the redemptive (more...)

It’s the hottest, most exclusive event in their sport, but the Golf Writers Association of America is turning down their VIP passes to today’s Tiger Woods redemption spectacle, and not because they have decided to scalp their tickets. The GWAA unanimously voted to boycott the event yesterday evening with a strongly worded statement stating, basically, that Woods is not in a position to be giving the media orders. Vartan Kupelian, the GWAA’s president, commented to the press that the organization agreed that “to limit the ability of journalists to attend, listen, see and question Woods goes against the grain of everything we believe." (more...)

A few hours after it was announced Tiger Woods would make his first public statement Friday at 11amET since his Thanksgiving night...incident, he was spotted jogging in a widely circulated Getty Images picture. But on closer inspection, the image, and the public statement, is vintage Tiger - and that's not a good thing. (more...)

The collective conscience of the New York City tabloid editorial departments are at work this morning. After news broke yesterday that Tiger Woods would be giving his first press conference (coffee klatch conference?) tomorrow, everyone wants to lock Tiger Woods up! Tiger on the loose, etc. (more...)

video The last public statement made by Tiger Woods was on December 2, but now it appears he's about to reemerge publicly. TMZ is reporting he will return to golf next month, while Charlie Gasparino, recently of Fox Business Network, reports he will first make a public apology, likely Friday. (more...)

video The anticipation for tonight's Super Bowl commercials includes the lead up to the big screen premiere of Google's Search Stories, which were released last year to flaunt the ease and accuracy of their search engine. In a minimalist, Apple-style ad, a close-up of the ubiquitous search bar tells a story. Tonight's spot will likely be in an identical style to the original series, though the subject may be new. But the beyond witty video team at Slate V had an idea of their own, and it breathes new life into Tiger Woods jokes. Slate sent "apologies to Google's new ad campaign." (more...)

The Miss America 2010 Pageant is over, and aside from Miss Virginia Caressa Cameron, the winner in Las Vegas was hot-button pop culture references. Miss Alaska made a quick and cheery Sarah Palin takedown, while other contestants skewered Tiger Woods and leathery Jersey Shore star "The Situation."

Maybe it's too much to expect consistency in a pageant world that has Rush Limbaugh a counterpart of Perez Hilton, but what ever happened to World Peace?

(more...)

The Daily Beast's Chief Investigative Reporter Gerald Posner, "award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, on topics ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism," just got the exclusive gossip scoop on what really went down with Tiger that fateful Thanksgiving Eve.

According to Posner's two sources--both close to Elin Nordegren, Tiger's wife--Tiger learned of the initial National Enquirer story before it went to print. So he was all "I'm going to put my wife and my mistress and the phone together," and Rachel Uchitel (mistress) was all "Go for it." So then she gets on the phone with Nordegren and spends 30 minutes convincing her they're just friends, all, you know, "We totally haven't even kissed," but then of course Nordegren got suspicious, so she sent fake text messages via Tiger's phone to Uchitel and then called her, and then Uchitel was all "Oh f--ck."

And then the school bell rang, everyone put their phones away and went to class.

Posner's article reads more like a gossip rag than a serious piece of traditional investigative journalism, and in doing so he gives National Enquirer Executive Editor Barry Levine some of the "vindication" he so desires.

For years the Enquirer has been producing what readers regard as "tabloid fluff," but in the last few months, they've broken two enormous celebrity scandals--Tiger and John Edwards, newly appointed baby daddy. The Edwards scandal had huge political implications, "rocked the campaign to its core," as Mark Halperin and John Heilemann note in their political expose Game Change. Isn't that what investigative journalism is supposed to do? Hold government and public figures accountable?

Come Pulitzer time, Levine wants to make sure the public doesn't forget that these scoops came from the Enquirer. And I have to agree-- somewhere along the way, the tabloid seems to have gotten pretty good.

geekosystem Well: that’s a relief! According to the president of EA Sports, the inexhaustible Tiger Woods scandal (seriously, it’s been two months) hasn’t put a damper on the sales of Tiger Woods-branded games.

After a few weeks of relative calm, it seemed that Tiger Woods had finally resurfaced in a sex addiction clinic in small town Mississippi, as evidenced by some super blurry (are there any other kind?) National Enquirer photos that showed the fallen star, under hat and hoodie. Now, online gossip site X17 is decrying the pics as fake with proof in the form of look-a-like photos. The Enquirer, meanwhile, is claiming cover-up. (more...)

Last night I was on the Joy Behar Show to discuss the Conan-Leno-NBC-Late-Night kerfuffle. Joy spoke first with Bill Carter of the New York Times, pretty much the go-to expert on all things late night thanks to his seminal — and still relevant! — book The Late Shift. Following Carter's comments (he thinks NBC and Leno will be just fine, by the way), Joy discussed the brou-ha-ha with her panel, which consisted of me, Rachelle Carson of "Living With Ed" (her show with husband Ed Begley) and comedian-actor-musician-pop-culture-expert Hal Sparks, who made me crack up on the air with a lube joke. Well done, Hal. Lube jokes are never rendered obsolete by breaking news stories. (more...)

video Just over a week ago, Fox News analyst Brit Hume made a bit of a stir when he suggested that embattled golfer Tiger Woods would be better off forsaking Buddhism for the more “redemptive” and “forgiving” Christianity. At the time, we asked if Hume was out of line, or was he just being a good friend to Tiger, though critics accused him of proselytizing Woods. Well as the following clip demonstrates, an effective defense to one's critics, is never admitting that what you did was wrong to begin with. (more...)

Andy Borowitz is hilarious. He has always been, of course, with his writing in the NYT and the New Yorker and at his award-winning humor site, The Borowitz Report, and at HuffPo (where he seems to write more than at the Borowitz Report now) — but now I get him in front of my face every day, cracking me up via his hi-larious Twitter feed. Anyone who reads me has seen me RT him, usually with a big "HA" as commentary, and it's because of stuff like this: "A book claims Warren Beatty had sex w/13,000 women, making him the #2 ranked golfer in the world" and "Airlines to Charge Passengers $50 for First Bomb" and "Mel Gibson looks really angry in his new movie. What did the Jews do to him this time?" Borowitz has made his name with pithy, zingy fake headlines and news strories just like that, and he only gets sharper (here's more: "Mistresses of Tiger Woods March on Washington" with this pretend-quote from a pretend 22-year-old "thong publicist": "We are sick and tired of being told to take our names off our voicemail greetings," she said. "We have demands and they must be met. Quickly. Huge"). He's a career humorist who has used the web smartly from day one, but he's also an extremely astute media and political observer whose one-liners are less tossed-off throwaways than succinct little nuggets of hilarious truth ("US Transfers Airport Security From TSA to TMZ") with the deft phrasing and timing that turns punchlines you thought you knew into something that makes you almost spit up your diet coke ("Cameron to Follow Up Avatar With Emoticon"). He really is one of my favorites, which is why I am so delighted that he agreed to answer our questions for the very first New Yecade installment of 5QQ - Five Quick Questions. (more...)

The February issue of Vanity Fair features an image that is sure to raise eyebrows: a shirtless Tiger Woods pumping iron, photographed by Annie Leibovitz before his alleged scandalous behavior became public. The featured article is penned by Buzz Bissinger, who weighs in on the apparent disconnect between Tiger's public image and private life. (more...)

On Fox News Sunday this morning, anchor Brit Hume dispensed some advice to embattled golfer Tiger Woods that's sure to touch off a firestorm of controversy, suggesting that Woods would be better off forsaking Buddhism for the more "redemptive" and "forgiving" Christianity. Was Hume out of line, or was he just being a good friend to Tiger? Jayne from Firefly agrees with him! Here's the clip, which is already the hottest thing on Twitter:
Transcript: (emphasis mine)

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think is a very open question, and it's a tragic situation with him. He's lost his family, it's not clear to me whether he'll be able to have a relationship with his children, but the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extgent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He's said to be a Buddhist, I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so my message to Tiger would be "Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

Good for Hume, I say. I've been wanting to tell Tiger to try agnosticism, but I just wasn't sure. I was going to suggest nihilism, but I didn't really believe it. On its face, Hume's remarks do seem to suggest that Christianity is superior to Buddhism, and the idea that someone should abandon their own faith for yours does reek of arrogance. Those who are offended by Hume's remarks aren't out in left field somewhere. As I asked Adam Baldwin, whose Twitter feed first alerted me to the clip, "Would you applaud if someone advised John Ensign or Mark Sanford to ditch Christianity?" I don't know Baldwin well enough to know how he would respond, but I'd lay good money that even casual Christians would be offended by such a proposition. It's one thing to extoll the virtues of your own faith, but quite another to denigrate someone else's. If you look at the context of Hume's remarks, it seems that he views religion as a menu comparison. Sure, Buddhism's great for achieving inner peace, but Christianity's got that redemption thing to fall back on. Hume's advice doesn't hinge on the relative truth of either religion, but rather the services it can offer a horndog golfer. What I find comical about Hume's entreaty is the notion that Buddhism is the problem, and not Tiger's flawed humanity. If Tiger had been practicing Buddhism, he wouldn't have wanted all that sex in the first place.

and the winner is Newspapers are dying, magazines are dying: this is the story of 2009 where the media is concerned. However, the future of media, such as it is, does not look quite so dim. Or dim at all, really. Obviously, the brave new media world that we are slowly moving into (some at a quicker pace than others!) will look entirely different in twelve months' time; something that will likely be in large part due to the efforts of the folks we listed on our online editors of the year poll. So who gets the final nod as our online editor of the year? Our picks below: feel free to add yours in the comments section. (more...)

According to a recent blog post on the Tiger Woods saga, "the reports you are reading on TMZ and RadarOnline are about 30% accurate at best:" Tiger and Elin Woods aren't moving towards divorce, Arnold Palmer is trying to help Tiger patch up his marriage, and Tiger hasn't appeared in public since the incident in November because his face was damaged and he needed plastic surgery. Revealing? Maybe. But just as surprising is the person who posted the account -- 91-year-old retired sportswriting great Furman Bisher -- and his response to the 43,000+ hits the blog post has gotten: surprise and annoyance. (more...)

It was Thanksgiving when the Tiger Woods story took off, and on New Years Eve comes the newest twist - AT&T has ended their sponsorship with the golfer. The company released a brief statement today: "We are ending our sponsorship agreement with Tiger Woods and wish him well in the future." (more...)

When looking ahead at the next year, pundits turn into prognosticators. Bloggers covering all sorts of topics and industries are now giving their predictions for what's to come in 2010. Conventional wisdom says to go the conservative route with these choices in order to avoid looking foolish when none of your projections pan out. At the same time, there's a key difference between picking things that are realistically possible and those that are already on the road to happening. I've assembled my favorite predictions covering a variety of fields and what's supposedly in store for the near future: (more...)

At the end of every year, Gallup asks Americans which men and women they most admire. Today, they released their results, a number of which are surprising. Gallup, and many news organizations, give top billing to the fact that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton narrowly beat Sarah Palin as the Most Admired Woman.

President Barack Obama easily won the Most Admired Man title, with 30% of mentions. But there's a new and noteworthy addition to the list. You guessed it: Glenn Beck, who came in fourth place. (more...)

It's easy to get caught up in the news craze of the day or the week and lose sight of the larger context. But which stories have really had the largest media impact in 2009? Luckily, there's a graph for that. The good folks at GOOD have put together an infographic that visually represents the degree to which "print, television, radio, and internet reporting" paid attention to the big stories of the year. Larger graph after the jump:  (more...)

Tiger Woods' fall from media, merchandising and marketing grace began on the day after Thanksgiving and continued in an awkward, extended arc as more and more revelations (and mistresses) came to the fore — and then, as more and more sponsors started falling away. (more...)