Celebrity Disaster

Tiger and Elin Woods

I don't care whether it is the field of news, sports, or celebrity--the biggest joke in the country is Tiger Woods. His personal life and his personal conduct are now being examined in a way that I don't think he or anyone close to him could have imagined. He has had his entire life pulled apart and exposed everywhere, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, since the day after Thanksgiving.

The ripple effect of all of this extends well beyond looking at his conduct. Two golfers now say that a celebrity tabloid website quoted them, and they were never even asked a question about Tiger Woods:

Two golfers quoted by a weekly magazine as making disparaging remarks about Tiger Woods and his marriage said Thursday night they never spoke to the publication.

In a story that Life & Style posted on its Web site, Ben Crane is quoted as saying Woods is a "phony and a fake" and that Woods' wife knew about allegations of extramarital affairs. It also quotes Charles Warren as saying Woods' wife "had stars in her eyes and maybe dollar signs too" and should leave him.

The magazine said in a statement it was investigating.

"This is unbelievable," Ben Crane told The Associated Press from his Dallas-area home. "I never said a word about anything. They print this and put my name next to it."

Warren said through his agent that he has not given an interview of any kind in two months.

"I have not spoken to Life & Style magazine, so there is no story here," Warren said in a statement.

Crane's agent, Tommy Limbaugh of 4UManagement, said a magazine official told him the interview took place at the PGA Tour Qualifying tournament last week at Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Crane finished 51st on the PGA Tour money list this year and was not at Q-school. Warren, who finished 147th on the money list, withdrew from Q-school before the final round. He was too far back to earn his card.

"We sent an experienced freelance reporter to a golf tournament attended by several PGA pros," the magazine said in a statement. "Our reporter spoke with two golfers who presented themselves as Ben Crane and Charles Warren. We are taking these claims very seriously and investigating further."

There are no standards when it comes to celebrity gossip sites. What should shock Warren and Crane is the fact that their claims are going to be met with shoulder shrugs and indifference. The so-called "journalist" who wrote that story likely has no credential to be a journalist and just took a few bucks for a made-up story written in haste. That "experienced freelance reporter" is who, exactly? A tabloid hack? Someone who walked in after falling off of a turnip truck? The real world meets the tabloid world, and all because Tiger Woods has become a national joke.

How else to explain this kind of thing:

In an exclusive interview Friday, admitted Tiger Woods mistress Jamie Jungers, 26, denied rumors that she had received any money from the famous golfer, whose once squeaky-clean image has been tarnished by a succession of women stepping forward to say they have had affairs with him.

“I didn’t even get a birthday card,” the woman who met Woods as a Las Vegas cocktail waitress told Meredith Vieira live on TODAY. “I got nothing out of this relationship but a broken heart.”

Jungers, who has worked as a lingerie model as well as a waitress, revealed details about her relationship with Woods both on TODAY and as part of a special report, “The Secret Life of Tiger Woods,” airing at 9 p.m. ET Friday on NBC’s “Dateline.”

She told Vieira that she and the 33-year-old golfing legend had what she called “a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship” during their year-and-a-half love affair, despite the fact that Tiger had just married wife Elin Nordegren when Jungers and Woods first spent a night together in early 2005.

How much truth is in that special report or in what Jungers is saying is anyone's guess. This story has legs of its own. It doesn't wait for actual quotes from actual golfers and it confers credibility on a woman who has to go on television to explain how she wasn't an escort and how she didn't get any of Tiger's money. I'm afraid the guilt by association taint is too strong here.

Did Tiger Woods secretly wish that, one day, he would be exposed as a creepy sex addict who favors blondes? Is there a porn star he hasn't slept with? Is there a cocktail waitress from Vegas he hasn't pursued?

This sort of refutes the idea that Woods didn't know what he was doing:

Jungers said she figured she would be nothing more than a one-night stand for the married superstar. She admitted being surprised when Woods called the next day. “He said he loved spending time with me, would love to get to know me more, and he gave me his phone number and told me to save it in a different name in case I lost the phone.”

Clearly, he was trying to cover up what he was doing, and he failed. He failed to keep his private life out of the tabloids, and, in so doing, became a national joke.