Tiger, Tiger, Tiger. First you say you’re not black, then the media showed you how black you really are. Your sponsors dropped you and said “we don’t need you boy“! Then in pure black exploitation fashion you get featured with your shirt off in Vanity Fair. Tiger, you play golf; go back to your nike hats and polos.
The media has successfully placed you in the category of the brute/ buck blaxploitation caricature. You are now being promoted as this hyper sexual black male. This picture is a poor attempt at making you look strong. We heard the voice mails, you’re not. Kick Rocks Uncle Tom!
The brute caricature portrays Black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal — deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace. Black brutes are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially White women.
Tiger looks sexy!!
Remember when MC Hammer started wearing Carhartt?
Ive just been publicly crucified for mistreating a (white) woman. My next move: scratch my harmless 'coblasian-nerd' look for (just another black) convict? This is the representation of the caricature you've been portrayed as, or as some will say: "his life was the caricature, this is the real animal." Tiger Woods, yall…
this clown has on a scully? Ppl still wearing scullies??? while working out shirtless??? outside??? lmao…Damn, they got you Tiger. They got you. sidenote (can't wait for Boondocks to get a hold of this…)
he and his publicity team should be ashamed of themselves. fail for crisis communications.
FAIL
I think these photos were taken in either in 2009 or 2008 (prior to scandal) and VF is just capitalizing on Tiger's confusion about marital fidelity.
the whole 'brute' thing….? someone's reading way too much into this. Tiger is an elitist athlete cheating lying American. He epitomizes what we all are taught to strive for. The racial confusion that "native" has is best sorted out in the privacy of his/her own mind, as to not waste our time.
do some research Galinsky. Google is your friend.
native notes: co-sign!
This entire situation is a hot mess…and what's worse, Tiger was too naive to see what the outcome of this photo shoot would even be…it's wrong on so many levels, but it's kinda funny to see him have that which he did not claim be thrown back at his face full blast live and in color…lol…
I feel like these are not recent pictures. Airbrushing aside, he looks younger in these photos. I cannot believe he, or any sensible PR person would sign off on these. Perhaps these were from an early photoshoot, and VF is capitalizing on the scandal? That's not beyond the scope of reality.
I definitely think VF is capitalizing on the scandal but I also wonder why Tiger ever did this shoot. It's not his image. VF knows what they are doing, re: the Lebron shoot, how they get these talented black guys to re-invoke the negative stereotypes of african americans is beyond me.
I think images just like this are the reason the shoot was probably initially scrapped; some creative director probably wrapped an editorial of Tiger as menacing/sex-symbol. This happens often. Just like Rihanna's US Vouge cover. She offended Anna Wintour, but Italian Vouge ran with the idea.
[...] I certainly didn’t expect to see him on the cover of Vanity Fair looking crazy! But I knew the inevitability of his black maleness would arise in the wake of his [...]
[...] 4, 2010 · Leave a Comment …for a halt on the Tiger Woods stories, but photos are okay! The narrative of a wealthy athlete cheating indiscriminately on wife has been exhausted unless he [...]
Now all of a sudden he wants to parade his "hardcore" image after being vilified by the damn media? I can't with this fraud.
I don't think Tiger had anything to do with this. These are old pics VF is putting on the cover to sell magazines. Nothing more, nothing less.
he's a true cornball.
This "ride or die" personna was at the very least sad and ill-conceived when originally taken. These are by no means post 'incident" pictures, but how convenient for VF and a seriously broke Annie Liebowitz to have them handy.
Mike Tyson after the death of Cus D'Amato became a magnifiscent horrific cautionary tale- but he always knew who and what he was…..
Tiger ????
So Tiger is our menacing black man now…hmmm
The funniest thing is that he was tryin so hard to work it, and he mos def ain't all THAT! Catastrophic FAILURE on this one Tiger.
Agree with a lot of the comments on so many levels. But it is true…
Vanity Fair is trying to make money, since sales have not been so good for the print world for years…
AND Annie Leibovitz is trying to make a dollar so that her entire life doesn't go up into the $24 million Bankruptcy fire that includes the rights to all of her work over the past 3-4 decades and a few homes across the Northeast.
Investors of companies linked to Tiger lost $12 billion, and the print and media media world is trying to soak up whatever is left. That's the way the cookie crumbles.
people are too caught up in media hype , stop drinking the kool aid
The media has Tiger by the tale and they're not letting go. Can you blame them? He's their meal ticket right now. Tiger knew the rules when he began to play. He made his money off a goodie-two-shoes image while living playing extras hole before getting caught on the back nine. Now the gig is up and people are making $$ – and lot's of it – off of his miserable existance. Don't expect any mercy because there won't be any.
As if tiger's fellow competitors need more reason to be intimidated? Interesting sociological view.
Neil
Wow, i'll never buy this magazine again for this type of slander….just sick!
nice gloss of that cover … well said
To quote the awesome Paul Mooney, Tiger Woods is getting his "n*gger wake-up call".
All he needs is some Olde English type gang letters tattoo'd across his back and he could appear on that TV show Lockdown. Oh, by the way, tiger has never identified himself as black even though many want him to be. He's about as black as Obama. His mama was Siamese and his daddy an American GI of African descent.
I wonder if Tiger did Annie Leibovitz too ? She's a lesbo but Tiger did have a way with them white wimmen didn't he ?
I think this look into Tiger Woods is overly literary. Every man has an image they portray, and when the old image is broken, they just pick up another one. Every time a black man tries to look hard doesn't mean he's being portrayed as a brute, and furthermore even IF white people saw that, I don't think that should be anyone's reason for acting one way or another.
I heard today that these photos and this spread was planned prior to the recent media capture of the Tiger. This Vanity Fair cover looks a lot like the infamous Newsweek cover of OJ during his trial. LeBron got "brutified" on Vanity Fair cover also not so long ago. When are brothers gonna learn? Still say all this is part and parcel of a great African American backlash going on since some Black got into the White house.
These photos are from a few years ago which were never used until now. Of course VF and Liebowitz are publishing them to make money. Why not? Look at all the other women trying to make money from Tiger now. When someone is down that is when people enjoy taking a piece of them. He made a mistake..just like almost any other man that has cheated. Not the first and won't be the last. He was too perfect….it was a matter of time before this flaw came out. I must say though…he looks good in the pic. Funny how nobody pays attention to you until you screw up. Part of me feels sorry for him…but the whole mess is of his making.
The pictures were taken in 2006.
What's interesting to me is how much effort was expended to project the Tiger "image" versus how much he seems to have hated the image that was making him all that corporate sponsorship money. His apparent over-the-top bad behavior almost seems like he was trying to push the envelope to see how far he could go until it all blew up. Sex in a church parking lot? That's a "dare me" if I ever heard of one.
And that he agreed to the pictures in the first place is amazing given how at odds they seem to be with the money-making "image" that his entire management team worked so hard to maintain. It's just inconceivable to me that the highly-paid IMG team would have gone along with the photoshoot, and it's fascinating to me that Tiger seemed to need the photoshoot exactly because it was so "off message."
Original Poster YOU MIGHT want to know what youre talking about before you go on a rant about it. Im disappointed in Tiger too but lets things in perpective.
The pictures are 4 YEARS OLD.