It’s been a tough public relations fortnight for those who really should know better. From Barack Obama’s White House to Tiger Wood’s Windermere House.
According to insiders, the President and First Lady were more than miffed about being used as props by pseudo-celebs Saleq and Michaele Salahi. They were, in fact, irate. They knew this black-tie faux pas had sub-plots beyond an overnight scandal that enabled an aspiring reality-show couple.
The president knew that to the relentless right, this would be further “proof” that, however well-intentioned, his Administration — charged with addressing economic, military, and healthcare-reform crises — was in over its audaciously hopeful head. Having amateur night on the occasion of the Administration’s first state dinner was no mere protocol mishap. It was further fodder for the usual braying, right-wing pontificators and late-night comics. Even “Saturday Night Live” turned Obama into a presidential piñata. Ouch.
Moreover, the Obama Administration’s early pledge for “an unprecedented level of openness in government” was later seen as naïve – or worse – when it prohibited White House social secretary Desiree Rogers from honoring a request to testify in front of a congressional committee. Through the perception-is-reality lens, a separation-of-powers rationale seemed blatantly hypocritical — and made matters worse.
And it hardly helped that the state dinner was for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The world’s most populous democracy, a next-door neighbor of nuclear wild card Pakistan, is one of this country’s most critically important geopolitical partners. For India, security is a visceral, necessarily volatile subject and an ongoing given for any country that shares a border with Pakistan. Mumbai was its 9/11. A White House security breech for a Singh dinner was particularly awkward – and symbolically unhelpful.
The fact that President Barack Obama and the White House are mentioned in the same sentence with high society low life is an outrage — and a humiliation. And all because somebody with a clipboard wasn’t assigned to check off names of invitees. Many bachelor parties have better security.
Woods In The Rough
As for Woods, he’s handled his still mushrooming ignominy worse than Michael Vick handled his. And that’s knowing that the public can more easily empathize with young- fabulously-rich-guy-on-the-road-encountering-hotties-on-the-prowl infidelity than animal cruelty. And the botched PR, candidly, is even more shocking than the revelations themselves about his un-Tiger, secret life away from Elin and the kids.
Woods, arguably the best golfer in history, is the world’s only billionaire athlete. His income from endorsements alone is estimated at $90 million annually. He is Tiger Inc.
So, why didn’t he have access to advice better than: “Issue a statement filled with euphemisms for marital affairs and then hunker down in your Windermere bunker”?
Any public relations novice could have told him that, however embarrassing and un-Woodsian, he had to get out in front of this story before it devoured him and his family. It’s called Damage Control 101.
This was no time for “transgressions”-grams. No, this is where you go on camera and dump it all out there. The strategy is self-servingly simple. Defuse and pre-empt before the TMZ.coms and Us magazines inevitably serialize this story in a daily, nightmarish drumbeat. Before infidelity updates begin running routinely on SportsCenter crawls.
Somebody needed to talk him out of the eminently understandable, but self-deluding rationale that this was none of anybody else’s business. It was a personal fall from grace, not manna for voyeurs. Leave Tiger alone. Etc.
Only problem with that is that it’s not relevant to the world that Woods inhabits. And capitalizes on. Those $90 million a year in endorsements are based on fame – and image.
For society’s quintessential public people, hiding out in not an option. Whether your house is the White one or the Windermere one.