If he keeps silent he is subject to the media scrounging around for more and more details on his affairs. While they can be completely lazy and irresponsible when it comes to detecting going to war on lies, they are relentless on sex scandals that sell copy. His agent can let them define the story, or take charge with Tiger Woods' version of the story. This becomes very important if his wife files for divorce because a nasty divorce will have two sides to the same story, and the press will want her to be the victim (she is already defined that way anyhow).

If the wife doesn't want a divorce, and if there are no more juicy tales to tell beyond what has come out, your scenario would work. The story would fade away. I'll guess we'll have to see how busy he has been to find out whether this is the case.

There is another aspect to consider, which is how he performs on the golf circuit once he returns. He has already exited his own tournament this month. Will he regain his composure and his following? Or will his game suffer? He still has to go through that trial, but if he is the same athlete as in the past, he has a chance that this other story will be forgotten in a few years.

...how one gets from the success of a guy who's probably the best ever at his game to nepotism. The issue isn't that brands exist - it's that brands are treated uncritically and that all too frequently in the final analysis the brand is all there is. Me, I think that's far more a function of the buyers than the sellers.

Similarly, awful lot of mentions of "we" in that second last graf but they in the main do not address the damning fact that "we" generally do not do the hard day to day work of continual oversight and incremental change. Leads ultimately to self-inflicted disempowerment and all sorts of romantic talk about armed revolution. I've seen the remnants of one full bore one and studied a number more - I want nothing at all to do with them and I dare say neither should any thinking person.

“You wanna see revolutionary change? Pick up a shovel or whatever the applicable analogue is for the situation. Rifles, they lead short-term to revolutionary spectacle and long-term to re-ordering of the same interests, not infrequently among exactly the same players." ~ not-Richard Haass

My connection to Tiger Woods and nepotism is through the practice of personal branding, which has become corrupt. The marketing of a product, an established practice in the modern economy since the late 19th century, is a difficult enough task. The branding of a person is much harder since you cannot control the product quality or the variables that go into defining the product.

Personal branding is prone to corruption. The person being branded is forced often to keep on a mask that represents the product ideal, so that quality does not appear to be compromised. When that person dies, the brand developers are often tempted to pass it on to the next generation. In some businesses, like politics, the cost of entry is so high that it is very tempting merely to slate a son or daughter for an election because that person has name recognition and can avoid the huge investment necessary to establish it. If you don't have name recognition, you have to create it, which can lead to an Obama-like attempt to be all things to all people.

Tiger Woods is not personally involved in nepotism - his kids are too young - but he is involved in a branding system that features nepotism as one of its corruptions. The system imposes a false ideal on the branded party, and he is a willing victim of this. In the political realm, the concept of marketing a candidate as the product, rather than the candidate's ideas, leads to a John McCain becoming a senator, or Sarah Palin a president.

This area of personal branding may be one of the "revelations" that allows people to open their ideas about how they are manipulated. It may be the case that the average person learns to react with disgust to the marketing of a Beau Biden for a senate seat just because his father is famous. I suspect one of the things going on this Christmas season is a sea-change in attitudes toward gift buying for the holidays. Out of economic necessity, people are forced to be highly selective as to what they buy for others, which leads to questioning the entire consumerist society we have built and the marketing that goes with it. Maybe we will learn that a celebrity endorsement is as useless as any other copy that a marketing ad man may put on a product.

How does this lead to armed revolution? In this area, I fear we may be surprised at the celerity with which a heavily armed populace in the first place finds ways to use their arms if they are angry and frustrated enough. It will of course be a minority of people who do this, and the media will be touting domestic terrorism and a general lawlessness as the problem, but the underlying enmity at the wealthy will be unmistakable at some point.

Not for nothing are employees of Goldman Sachs - people who are trained to think ahead - beginning to arm themselves for protection.

...that the corruption is something more generated by the consumer than your depiction of it presumes. For me, the notion that these personal brands don't live up to their supposed content is in large part because they couldn't possibly do so. People want to believe so much that they project a massive amount into these personal brands - a guy who's just about excellence in whacking a little white ball around the landscape ends up being so much more, family guy, nice guy, safe black man, on and on.

In terms of the linkage to nepotism, I see the personal brand as a potential tool in the service of nepotism, nothing more. For me there's little about the personal brand that leads necessarily there, though it can be an effective means of operationalizing the strategy. Most personal brands are, to my eyes at least, far too personal to be vehicles for nepotism that are anywhere like as effective as more traditional behind the scenes ones. Subsidiary brands need to be created over a period of years, with their own independence and even then they tend to be pale imitations. (Not unrelatedly I spent a fair amount of time in and out of Syria during the development cycle of the Bashir brand - not a terribly successful process I have to say.) I'm way, way more concerned about traditional nepotism than the highly exotic personal brand form of it - already seeing terrible hiring practices around the offspring of boomers and traditional labour is pretty much entirely complicit; they're not going to much like what they're going to reap, but that's a post for another day, if ever.

As to the increasingly common notion of armed revolution, me I tend to think that the specific form of it that I see expressed here is elite silliness. That armed populace selected as the agent of change buys into the system far more completely than anyone here. There are certainly people who are lightning rods for their discontent, but the system itself that they buy into big time.

More directly to the point, this isn't something to be wished for, even vaguely by projecting actions onto vaguely defined "others". Revolutions are butchery brought home - everything that folks around here project onto the so-called imperial project, in living colour in their town, on their street.

Revolution in the modern American context wouldn't be an act of creative destruction out of which new social compacts would spring - it would be the final act of establishment entrenchment in different guise. When it comes to implements like this, y'all'd be in way, way over your heads. The other side (to the extent that there really is one) is far more capable in this domain. Fortunately there are myriad other avenues for change other than the easy romantic notion of revolution. Overriding question to my mind is whether folks are up for the long quotidian grind of those approaches - rather a lot more work than the alternatives put forward thus far.

“As tools go, the blade of the shovel is far more effective than the blade of the bayonet. And far less apt to be turned against he/she who wields it." ~ not-Richard Haass

I think a great deal of money and effort is put into selling these personal brands and controlling the message. It doesn't seem to me that the consumer is more to blame for projecting some image on to the actor or athlete, when the entirety of the effort is made by the seller of the image. The techniques used are not too different from what Madison Ave. uses for a corporate product, and I don't think we can say that the American consumer is somehow more to blame for believing in a particular detergent than the company that sells it.

As to nepotism, yes indeed you are correct that it is an off-shoot of the branding exercise. In fact it exists in its own right as a problem, increasingly in the political realm, and I suppose you could argue equally that branding is just one of the tools it uses.

As to armed revolution, it doesn't seem likely we are going to see violent protests in the street by homeless people, though it can't be ruled out. But we can expect more violence, some of it directed at the wealthy and privileged. A lot of it may come from those already armed on the Teabag side of the spectrum, and it may also be aimed at supposed liberals, who one presumes would be terribly out-gunned in such attacks. We are already inured to a considerable amount of gun violence in this country - does anybody remember last month's mass killings? Attacks on the wealthy or liberals will get some initial notice, but the media and the public can get saturated with these stories so quickly that they won't care.

I'm wondering though if the bigger problem lies in the area of municipal finance, and the potential bankruptcy of many local governments. Where will the money come from to pay for the police? Here is where the potential for a rise in general lawlessness and vigilante violence could take place. This has more potential to occur than an armed rebellion. In fact, you wouldn't need the rebellion part, because dissolution of local government would leave open an opportunity for certain political forces to enter the breach under the guise of protecting the public.

...equal revolution. Violence can be an implement of revolution, a symptom that the situation is ripe for one or even a pressure relief valve serving to stave one off. Revolutions develop, are organized and are led to ends - none of that do I currently see in the United States.

Frankly, more than anything I see a populace that is unable or unwilling to fully grasp the scale and the nature of systemic change that is happening around it. Obama looks like Bush in large part because the latitude of action the United States has imposed on itself is so limited, in turn in large part because of the scale of events and the tyranny of what a large part of the electorate will accept once debate is joined. More and more I see people disempowering themselves by calling for the grand gesture, the sweeping change to be emplaced on their behalf, that will somehow make things better without actually acknowledging the current change and associated period of unsettledness. Oddly what folks seem to want most is a revolution back to the norm and the world just isn't going to work that way.

“You can either seek to surf the wave of change or build dykes to contain it, and y'all ain't Dutchmen." ~ not-Richard Haass

'old' norm people are looking for, I think the population is pissed because our leaders want the 'old' norm back. I think the job summit comment of we have limited resources said it all.

Violence doesn't equal a revolution that can accomplish real change. My rather obscure reference in the piece to the 1848 revolutions in Europe was meant to reflect this. The old regimes, especially in France, came back stronger than before, but the violence scared the ruling classes so much that absolute monarchy was abandoned in favor of constitutional monarchy. By the end of the century only Russia was holding on to absolutism, with disastrous consequences for the ruling family.

Now this sentence does get to the core of the problem in the US.

Frankly, more than anything I see a populace that is unable or unwilling to fully grasp the scale and the nature of systemic change that is happening around it.

Revolution is not about to spring from an apathetic and clueless population. Rather, you may get sporadic and growing violence in reaction to the systemic change, more than likely localized violence against persons rather than against institutions or the government. This is especially true in communities where policing breaks down or becomes corrupt.

It also seems true, in relation to your last sentence, that people want the 1990s status quo, which in many respects is what Obama is offering - Clinton without the sex scandals. It will get really interesting when people realize that those days are gone for good. Budget surpluses aren't coming back anytime soon. The government really does have borrowing constraints at some point, imposed by the global bond market (notice we are heading up to 5% yield on the long bond this month). Personal frugality will be the New Norm, to use the Pimco phrase. This will be a real point of fragility for the social order. Interestingly, at some point this will lead to outright criticism of the military and the empire, as Ron Paul calls it. I think of all the candidates in last year's primaries, including the winner Obama, Ron Paul will turn out to have the most influence. I'll bet the Fed is seriously worried about him now.

Setting aside the Nike talk (funny thread :) the interesting thing is how revolutionary vanguards like the 1848 scene spread thru Freemason lodges and all that stuff. With the Jacobins you had a pretty slick lineup wherein first the aristocracy got assaulted, then the revolution 'turned on itself' and more authoritarian outcomes eventually resulted.

If it came to something resembling disorder and quasi-armed revolt (it already saturates a lot of imagery like TV shows Jericho and Sons of Anarchy portray) then it's true the vacuum would attract neo-authoritarian bands into existence. Any 'pure' (so to speak) armed revolution would be riddled with backdoors placed by the elite & the rich.

I have seen such informant/provocateur operations at a small scale used to discredit & disrupt radicals so one could only expect similar playbooks and a heavy role for private contractors and the like.

Shorter: Jacobinist vanguards get Pwned or turned to establishment advantage. (and you could certainly argue that historically Jacobins were vanguards for Illuminati-style authoritarians in Europe :)

--
Hongpong.com

He will certainly have the most influence in the years to come, though he will not be credited. Those who laughed at his growing support day by day will never concede their face. The majority of this tea party movement, regardless of the sheer lunacy and stupidity of a vast majority of its proponents, was crafted by sentiment fostered by Ron Paul. Honestly, when did anyone seriously discuss the FED and the country's monetary policy like this at such a large scale?

With all of the ridicule people like myself received for supporting Dr. Paul in last years election, I can only hope that people start to realize what they have been sold with President Obama. Aw hell, I might even break out the old RP 2008 campaign stickers and throw one on my car this week. I sure as hell have given up on our current president ever doing anything substantive.

He hasn't even shown his face to the police since the accident. Fortunately for him the hospitals are honoring their confidentiality pledge by keeping any photos of him private, though in the course of treatment of facial abrasions it would be odd for a hospital to take photos in the first place. It would be a private cell phone photo taken of a celebrity by someone on the staff that would be more his worry.

And yes, he may be afraid of the interview process, which is a minefield of traps sometimes not too different from being interrogated on a witness stand.

His most recent statement on his website, which has left nothing but open questions, seems the work of a committee and not that of a single trained legal mind. It's as if his agent is having difficulty getting his client to agree to anything reasonable that would quell public questions and take command of the story.

At least nine have come forward, but you have to account for gate crashers. Still, a number of these women have convincing evidence on their side. If we do get up to 25 women, the club used by his wife will have been upgraded by then to a driver. Jasper Parvenik, the golf pro who introduced Tiger Woods to the family nanny, a Swedish model whom Woods eventually married, now says he wishes she had used a driver on him rather than an iron.

When it was a 2 iron being rumored, the joke going around was that now there were two people on the professional tour who actually knew how to play this club - Tiger and his wife.

I wonder when the movie will come out and pictures of all the love children :D

I would take the 5 million she's already received, pack my bags, take the kids and move back to Sweden. And I would tell Tiger to stick his money up his arse and fuck his empire and fuck golf!

But that's not going to happen because currently he's negotiating the price of her loyalty.

If she decides to stay another two years when she will be eligible to collect her "good wife" price, I hope that, while she's acting to keep up the pretense, she finds herself a good lover or two who treat her well and cater to all her sexual fantasies and desires.

She kept her end of the bargain in this marriage by containing her sexuality. Now it's her turn to play the field.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

Wow! You go Elin!

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

Porn star Joslyn James brings the number of women linked to Tiger Woods to 11

Fox Entertainment Blog, December 8

Tiger Woods' list of possible paramours grew to eleven Tuesday with the addition of a second porn star.

Lurid details at the link.

This man is TIGER WOODS. He is the world's greatest golfer and quite possibly the greatest in the history of the game. Everyone around him tells him that and everything he reads or hears in the media repeats it. The vast amounts of money he makes and the enormous crowds and attention he receives everywhere confirm his greatness.

He must think of himself as exempt from normal human behavioral constraints - short of crime (though O.J. didn't even stop there). He is young, he is invincible, he is entitled to earthly rewards befitting a pharaoh.

His ego is being massaged in ways few humans can imagine. Then there are the women who flock around him - professionals at seeking out star athletes for a chance at bedding them. These women are gorgeous and skilled at allurement. Does Tiger stand a chance?

The interesting thing about him - the great contradiction - is that on the golf course, and at the core of his athletic success - is the will and determination to focus on the supreme goal of defeating a field of 70 other professionals in a tournament. He is superbly and uniquely skilled at this. He has the talent to focus as well on living out the image of a devoted husband and family man that his personal brand projects, and which is the source of his fortune. But in this area, he abandons his self-discipline. He in fact behaves recklessly, almost as a way of proving that his greatness extends even to bad behavior and exempts him from consequences.

In this he is wrong. Besides dealing with his wife leaving him, imminent divorce, a loss of prestige and income as corporations think twice about hiring him, there is this psychological blow to his ego. It might be the worst of his problems.

TMZ - Tiger Woods was admitted to Health Central Hospital the day after Thanksgiving as an overdose.

Sources connected with the hospital tell TMZ the admissions chart lists "OD" and that he was having trouble breathing.

We're told the fifth floor of the hospital was put on lockdown when Tiger arrived. Tiger was admitted under an alias -- William Smith.

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2009/12/08/tiger-woods-hospital-overdose/#ixzz0Z6C5SiR1

him on this. After spending many many years on both of those drugs it is an easy accident. I used to have to write down the time when I took either of those drugs or tell my daughter because it is very easy to forget exactly when you took them. The ambien on top of the vicodin makes it very easy to lose track of time, especially when one is working overnights. Night and day were sometimes hard to distinguish, especially in the short winter days.

were out of control to compensate for the extreme discipline.

A salutatory lesson of the need for balance and moderation.

The pressure keg exploded, hopefully he has the help he needs to find a middle way to cope and re-centre.

A woman was transported to a hospital from Tiger Woods' Florida home after firefighters responded to a medical call early Tuesday, NBC News reported.

According to Orlando-based WESH, the adult female was taken from the $2.6 million mansion "on advanced life support" after firefighters received a call at 2:36 a.m.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34323757/ns/sports-golf/

saying she has been released

Are those two options completely separate from each other? Why couldn't both be factors?

Elin iz ze BIG BITCH, jaaa, ze bayby machine, waz she sink she iz, anyvey? Human or somesink like zat? Poor Tiger – he have sooo big cock, jaaa. N all ze mullah he haz. Ayayayayay! Hee reelly iz Saint Tiger of ze Big Cock. Hehehe, I haz idea. Howbout apoll. I haz zree qwestionz.
Whaddayasink Saint Tiger of ze Big Cock likuh bezt?
1. Ze Blowjobbe
2. Ze Analee
3. Cunnilinguz
I zink 1 enz 2 iz a tozzup, jaa. Hehehe

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

People paid hundreds of millions of dollars for products with his image associated with them. When what he does in his private life contradicts radically this image, the public not surprisingly is a little put out. Also, in response to your opening question, I think most people are very surprised by his behavior. It seems so out of character to who people think he is.

Perhaps I didn't frame it well enough, but this is one of the things I was getting at: why does our culture require a golfer to jump through this sort of hoop? There's a good chance that he would have elected NOT to marry had this been a reasonable option for him, in the process saving his wife and future children from quite a bit of grief.

I didn't care what Bill Clinton's private life was like and I don't care what Tiger Woods' private life is like. While I understand the reasons you give it's still baffling to me that so many people do care. He's a guy who hits a ball well, and the rest is media spectacle.

of the hypocrisy.

He had his entire entourage of men helping him keep his multiple liaisons secret from his wife. I bet those men must have had a few good laughs at her expense.

And nobody talks about his kids. What an asshole of a father they have.

Tiger Woods has zero values. If he doesn't win another game of golf, I'll be very happy.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

The fact remains that if there weren't such a stigma attached to the unmarried and childless then this situation likely would not have occurred in the first place.

I'm on Elin's side here, but at the same time she could have picked a partner who was less likely to cheat. She didn't.

I don't look to golf for values.

Contrary to what some have claimed about Elin, that she was just a celebrity seeking blonde who shoud have known better, Elin was anything but...

.....she seemed to prefer her famous husband Tiger Woods' shadow to the public eye.

But this week's tabloid headlines and allegations linking Tiger Woods to other women thrust Nordegren into the spotlight she shunned.

"Tiger Woods is the visible part of this relationship. She's behind the scenes on greens," Jason Sobel, who covers golf for ESPN.com, said, adding that she has done no interviews since marrying Woods in 2004.

....."Elin comes from an educated family," Sobel said. "Her father is a journalist in D.C., her mother is a politician in Sweden. They divorced many years ago."

The former swimsuit model never wanted a flashy celebrity life, according to a photographer who worked with Nordegren during her brief modeling career. Instead, she left the fashion world to study child psychology.

But then a chance encounter led to a job as an au pair to a Swedish golfer, Jesper Parnevik. In 2001, Parnevik introduced her to Woods.

Nordegren reportedly said "no" when Woods first asked her out.

Photographer Bingo Rimer told Sports Illustrated in 2004 that "she didn't want to be just a celebrity girlfriend. ... She didn't want to be seen just as a decoration on Tiger's arm."

But Tiger continued to pursue her, reportedly paging her six times a day. Once he won Nordegren over, he proposed to her on an African safari. The two married Oct. 5, 2004, in a lavish, star-studded $2 million wedding in Barbados.

"I have found a life partner, a best friend," Woods told "60 Minutes" in 2006. "You know, Elin's been incredible for me. She's brought joy and balance in my life. We love doing the same things. You think I'm competitive? She's way more competitive than me."

Parnevik's wife, Mia, who helped introduce the couple and is reportedly still a good friend of Elin's, told Sports Illustrated in 2004 that although people might believe this was a Cinderella story for Elin, it was actually the other way around.

"But Tiger is the one who got the catch," Mia told the magazine. "He's lucky he found Elin." Source

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

She may have been his last chance at balance in his life, but he blew it. It is hard to imagine what sort of pain she is experiencing in this situation, some of which she is sharing with him in dealing with whatever demons he has, and a good part of which must revolve around the two children. Exactly how they extract themselves from this situation, assuming they want to stay together, depends on so many factors, starting with Tiger's ability to alter his behavior, and extending to destroying the infrastructure he has built around himself.

No wonder Elin bought herself a house on a small island near Stockholm. It will allow her to escape from the celebrity culture she despises and from Tiger. I just can't see him living on a small cold island with no place to practice golf.

They will try to keep their marriage afloat for the sake of the children, but at the end of the day, their children may be better off with their parents living apart.

The man Tiger Woods is incompatible with marriage since he has proved himself to be the biggest whore on the planet.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

Everybody's knickers are knotted over Wood's musical beds routine, but nobody worries about Nike's family values. This 2005 article notes the outstanding improvements in Nike's Chinese sweat shops (although the reporter was only allowed to visit one.

Nike's contract work force, meanwhile, has grown to 653,000 in more than 50 countries. One of those workers, Lu Ling, a 26-year-old Golden Prene stitching operator, left her distant rural village eight years ago. She works a standard 60-hour six-day week.

As the eldest child, the middle-school dropout sends money home from her $145 monthly earnings so that her siblings can attend school. Hunched over a sewing machine, she races to exceed hourly production targets so her team can earn more. "Someday," Lu says, "I want to have my own bag factory."

Make's ya feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? Boy, that awful Tiger Woods guy. The nerve of him, betraying a terrific corporate sponsor like Nike.

Reuters, December 14

Chicago - Nike Inc Chairman and co-founder Phil Knight said the scandal surrounding Tiger Woods is "part of the game" in signing endorsement deals with athletes and did not back away from the athletic shoe and clothing maker's relationship with the golfer.

Woods, 33, has admitted to "infidelity" in his marriage to his Swedish wife Elin Nordegren as allegations of multiple extra-marital affairs have rocked his life and career.

Knight told Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal [subscription req.] that Nike checked out Woods' background before signing its deal with the golfer and "he came out clean."

[...]

"I think he's been really great," Knight said in the interview published on Monday. "When his career is over, you'll look back on these indiscretions as a minor blip, but the media is making a big deal out of it right now."

Nike lacks any sense of moral decency. Global consulting firm Accenture has severed a six-year sponsorship deal with Woods. Luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer began taking down ads in Australia that features the 33-year old Mr. Woods. Gillette announced earlier it will no longer use Mr. Woods in its television and print campaigns. And we know that Gatorade has axed its Tiger-Focus drink. But, as Raja's post indicates, it's business as usual with Nike. It appears Nike has no concept of values of any kind.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

My point in mentioning Nike is that, however one views Nike's corporate ethics, they are not, at least, guilty of hypocrisy in their stand regarding Tiger Woods. The same can certainly not be said for other Woods sponsors now scrambling into unfamiliar territory on the high ground.

Lets take Accenture, for example. Perhaps you know them by their previous name, Anderson consulting, used until that rather nasty legal mess with the founder, Arthur Anderson, a few years back. An Accenture primary business relates to the secreting away of vast amounts of cash in offshore accounts for wealthy clients who don't like having the IRS as a partner. Accenture itself was head officed in the tax haven of Bermuda, but now prefers the favourable treatment they receive in Ireland. Incorporation in a tax haven or other favourable off-shore tax environment is more than a bit unusual for publicly-traded federal contractors. By the way, among its many enterprises, Accenture National Security Services is a subsidiary of Accenture that provides services directly to United States government in the national-security space. Its customers include the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice. How did that old soldier's song go? "Praise God and pass the code for the secret offshore account"? Oh yeah, that's it.

The following excerpts are gleaned from their WIKI

Accenture has been criticized repeatedly by Lou Dobbs of CNN and others for moving many jobs outside the U.S., resulting in loss of work and employment for some U.S. citizens. This is because Accenture utilizes Global Delivery Centres in South Asia and Southeast Asia (such as Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai in India, and, Manila and Cebu in the Philippines) to reduce cost and increase profit margin in outsourcing deals with major U.S. companies. This enables Accenture to perform work (such as software development and call centre support) at a greatly reduced employee cost as compared to U.S. employees.

Loss of sensitive data

In September 2007, Accenture was implicated in a high-profile case of loss of sensitive data (sometimes referred to as a "data spill") on individual American citizens. Consulting companies Accenture and Compuware had been developing the Ohio Administrative Knowledge System (OAKS), an information system for the state of Ohio. The lost information was being used in the development of the system and was on a backup computer tape stolen on June 10, 2007..[16][17] The stolen tape contained the names and Social Security numbers of: every Ohio state employee; more than half a million people who were owed tax refunds by the state of Ohio; 602 Ohio Lottery winners who had not cashed their winnings; 84,000 welfare recipients; and tens of thousands of other individuals. It also contained taxpayer identification numbers for Medicaid providers and bank account information for school districts and local governments.[18] The tape also contained sensitive information related to the state of Connecticut, also an Accenture client, that was being used in Ohio to develop a similar state government information system

But let's move on.

TAG Hauer, as everybody knows, is the manufacturer of extremely expensive luxury Swiss wrist watches - make that, may my husband forgive me - ginormously overpriced Swiss wrist watches. Throughout much of their history they've most closely aligned their marketing with auto racing and aviation. The Tiger Woods deal was a significant departure for them.

According to their website, this is The first watch for golf professionals, developed and worn by Tiger Woods. It has been specially designed to meet golfers’ special requirements. Its high-tech materials and carefully studied ergonomic design means that the TAG Heuer professional golf watch will never bother a golfer during the swing.

A noteworthy aspect of this company is that they have many, many equally impressive trade competitors hustling equally impressive timepieces, not to mention threats from an army of knock off makers who've set up shop in the shady alleys of the internet. For one or other or both of these reasons, TAG Heurer is an extremely litigious company, defending its brand with truly awesome zeal.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, except that the majority owner of TAG Heurer, is actually the publically traded French company, LVMH. I bet most buyers of luxury goods believe they're buying something very special and unique when they purchase a Louis Vuitton handbag, a DeBeers diamond ring; Christian Dior Parfum, a bottle of Dom Perignon, a gown by Givenchy, or visit the Paris department store Samaritane or shop for Sephora cosmetics. These are just a few of the over 50 luxury brands owned and tightly controlled by LVMH, all notable to significant degree, by the intensity of their branding efforts, and each characterized by intense brand protection practices. After all, they know, as should any smart buyer, that there's really very little difference these days between a watch by the Swiss maker TAG Heurer and those of another Swiss manufacturer, Zenith. Never mind. Regardless of which product a consumer buys, he's still dealing with LVMH. The company owns both those watchmakers, as well as Hublot, Dior watches and pens, and the high fashion boutique Chaumet watch and fine jewellery line. (All this is, of course, very handy when determining products, prices and distribution, etc. However, the company can hardly be accused for price fixing. They own all these brands. It's only the consumer who's in the dark about what they're buying.)

Gilette's name is practically synonomous with sports in the USA, reflecting the clean cut image of the ideal American macho man. (Warren Buffet is/was the company's principal shareholder.) Snuggled down in his lazy-boy, kicking back cold ones while watching the football game, absorbing Gilette razor ads, consumers certainly aren't thinking about the company's Proctor and Gamble ownership, a vast "personal products" empire that includes Tide, Crest, Charmin bathroom tissue and Pampers disposable diapers together with Gilette's other well-known brands such as Duracell batteries and Braun kitchen gear. The high price of Gillette blades, relative to other similar products is not a concern in flashy ads that wax at length about triple blades and revolving heads and ultra clean shaves. After all, it appears to be an American product for the American man's man. Actually, none are actually manufactured in the USA. On a side note, their WIKI observes "In 2005 an injunction was brought by rival Wilkinson Sword which was granted by the Connecticut District Court who determined that Gillette's claims (about multiple blades, etc.) were both "unsubstantiated and inaccurate" and that the product demonstrations in Gillette's advertising were "greatly exaggerated" and "literally false." While advertising in the United States now had to be rewritten, the court's ruling does not apply in other countries."

Their WIKI also notes "Marketing experts have highlighted "the curse of Gillette", given the mishaps that happen to sports stars associated with the brand".

Finally, we have Gatorade. This is a product originally marketed by Quaker Oats, that obtained a 25 year head start on "sports drink: marketing by effectively using US patent laws to keep competitors at bay. This allowed them to catapult expensive flavored water into a financial empire by appealing to the sports crowd with lots and lots of iffy science that still relentlessly reports that Gatorade will keep you running longer and faster than equivalent amounts of, say tap water, Freshie and a pinch of salt - something scientific sounding about fiddling around with your "electrolytes". Regardless of this, I'm willing to bet that not an ounce of Gatorade has ever dampened the lips of a single Kenyan marathon winner. Since 2000, Gatorade has been owned by Pepsi, pursuant to their fiercely fought hostile takeover of Quaker Oats. This played a significant role in making Pepsi 53rd in the Deloitte list of the world's top 250 consumer products in 2008.

According to its WIKI, The original Gatorade contains water, sucrose (table sugar) and glucose-fructose syrups, citric acid, fish oil, sodium chloride (table salt), sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate,and flavoring/coloring ingredients. Some Gatorade flavorings use brominated vegetable oil as a stabilizer. Gatorade Thirst Quencher meets the Food and Drug Administration’s definition of a "low sodium product." Gatorade is available in a variety of flavors, including the original Lemon-Lime, Grape, Orange, and Fruit punch.

As I said, Freshie with a pinch of salt. I don't know of any legitimate studies that suggest fish or vegetable oil can make you a better athlete.

Nevertheless, through a bit a chicanery, lots of face time in court, and a rigidly protected patent, even with competition from over 50 similar and much cheaper products now on the market, Gatorade is the official sports drink of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, Women's National Basketball Association, USA Basketball, National Hockey League, Association of Volleyball Professionals, US Soccer Federation, Major League Soccer, and many other pro and collegiate organizations, in large measure because the company provides free supplies of the drinks to the teams in all flavors available.

My point is that all of these mega-corps activities are firmly based on extensive, relentless branding initiatives supported by extremely aggressive legal protections. Of course, there is nothing essentially "wrong" with any of this. Any business tyro knows the cardinal rule - the business of business is to make money. Nothing more, nothing less. Lord knows, these global giants have this essential commandment emblazoned in the foundations of their deep fried corporate souls.

What IS at question is that any of these corporations care one scintilla about Tiger Woods indiscretions or his "family values" That they have chosen to break their contracts as an expression of their collective disapproval of his lifestyle is flat out absurd. Were there an ounce of honesty at any of these HQs, they'd simply say Tiger Woods has gone rogue. He may cost us money if Jesus freaks quit buying our expensive watches, our over-priced razoz blades or or our costly flavoured water, so we're axing our deals with him. They didn't drop their "sponsorships", they just dropped their expensive brand's neumonic device. That they are doing this so dishonestly is, in my opinion, by far the most important reflection on the business ethics of these global companies.