Playing the Game

THERE IS A GRAND new tradition in the stellar realm of american celebrity-dom, and why should you, of all people, have to wait until the next episode of "america's most clever celebrity comments", or "smarting off with the stars" to get the grime?

The usual pattern goes something like this: rich, beautiful and famous celebrity "A" makes crass and inappropiate comment about rich, beautiful and famous celebrity "B", gets caught, the tabloid press (is there any other kind in the U.S. of  Advertising?) makes much ado of it, celebrity "A" apologizes melodramatically, gushingly, and everybody goes home even more famous and happy. Its a formula that seems to work for us all, especially in the profit columns of corporate paparazzi nation.

Among the more attractive targets is the ubiquitously soap operatic Tiger Woods, the undisputed prince of melodramatic personal interatcion. And why not? He's black, beautiful, rich, famous, prone to displays of emotion, and, the piece de resistance, he's a pretty fair week end golfer to boot.

It was in 1997 that good ole white boy "Fuzzy"  Zoeller made an unsavory comment about, yo, Tiger's dietary habits, suggesting, that after Tiger won his first masters at that lily white citadel of southernly gentitlity, THE masters of augusta,  he might wish to choose, oh, what, something like possum stew and collard greens, or whatever "they" eat, for the following year's traditional victors dinner, a traditional prerogative of the prior year's winner.

And yes, the cute scenario played completely, precisely on script, with the requisite mea culpa.

And here are are, and mere sixtten years later, but blink of the eye in the world of traditionally stately gentlemanly golf, and enter sergio garcia, and, again, but of course, el tigre.

The hispanic gentleman and the african american "brotagonist" (implicit racism a priori) do not get on swimmingly, so the stage is set, and the script is prepared. This time the menu is "fried chicken", and the apology sufficiently dramatic, if a tad understated. How we americans gobble up the repeats and leftovers in our intellectually deprived but star studded celebrity saturated  "culture", to use the term generously.

And that'll have to do for today's bill of fare, folks. Hope everyone is satisfied, but not to worry; another offering will surely appear on tomorrow's menu of  spicy media entrees; this is america, and we wouldn't think of missing the titillating daily special.