In a column published in Monday's edition of the Washington Post noted author and Golf
Channel contributor John Feinstein explored the weekend that was in sports, and
concluded that a normally uneventful period on the calendar had turned out to
be rather fruitful for sports talk radio fodder.
"This is supposed to be a quiet time of year in sports," Feinstein wrote. "Things are usually so dull that a one-day holdout from an NFL training camp by a first-round draft pick passes for news."
Mr. Feinstein, you'd be surprised at what currently masquerades as news.
A day after Tiger Woods picked up PGA Tour victory No. 69, leaving him behind only Sam Snead (82) and Jack Nicklaus (73), by virtue of his three-shot win at what was likely the last-ever Buick Open, headlines from reputable news sources read:
"Does a Tiger Fart in the Woods," courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times and "Did Tiger Woods break par...and break wind," crafted by the Detroit Free Press.
Assuredly the likes of Herbert Warren Wind and Walter Cronkite were rolling over in their respective graves as the blogosphere was joined by the mainstream media in speculating whether or not a ‘fart noise' emanating from where Woods and his caddie Steve Williams were lining up for their approach shot on the 18th fairway during Sunday's final round was in fact "dealt" by the world's No. 1 golfer.
"On the day after his three-shot victory at Warwick Hills, the buzz around Tiger did not center on his first tournament since missing the British Open cut," surmised an article by USA Today detailing the event. "Instead, it was about a YouTube video in which someone passes gas. So much for golf being a gentleman's sport."
And so much for anyone gathering and disseminating news in the age of new media. Outlets such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and millions of blogs that give voice and even credibility to any moron possessing internet access have sullied the reputation of news services and forced the likes of the Detroit Free Press and Chicago Sun-Times to stoop to childish levels in order to collect precious click-throughs and page views.
Our great sport, played by gentlemen like Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan in historic arenas like Augusta National and St. Andrews, was relegated to a juvenile fart joke by a gossip Web site that considers a visit to McDonald's by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt newsworthy.
Of course I'm talking about TMZ.com, which titled its story "Tiger Woods - Whoever Smelt it Dealt It." Let me retract that previous choice of words and replace it with video clip because TMZ rarely ever does any writing that requires an elementary school education. They merely send videographers around town and shoot clips of celebrities and athletes walking in and out of restaurants and clubs and ask them ridiculous questions in hopes of capturing an outlandish response.
The PGA Tour and CBS Sports quickly followed Nike's lead in the LeBron James dunk video incident and had the video removed citing copyright violations. However, the video is still visible on TMZ.com.
I was absolutely shocked to read USA Today's article and find that Ty Votaw, executive vice president of communications for the PGA Tour actually commented on the matter.
"After consultation with CBS, we took it down for copyright purposes," Votaw said. "I can also confirm after consultation with CBS that it was not Tiger Woods."
Seriously?
The PGA Tour has a policy that prohibits anyone from commenting on player fines or suspensions, but it allows its senior communication official to comment on a possible act of flatulence by Tiger Woods?
Tuesday the story continued to have legs. Examiner.com is still analyzing the presumed ‘fart' two days after it occurred as if it were the Kennedy assassination.
"Watch the video and see where Tiger and Stevie's eyes shoot to as soon as the sound erupts; it's off camera, and to the right," their so-called reporter wrote. "Off camera, and to the right: proving that there was one perpetrator, outside the ropes."
Hopefully this latest development will quiet speculation that it was Woods, an iPhone iFart application or David Feherty because who honestly cares.
During a summer that has seen the American public deluged with Michael Jackson news and tributes and claims by obscure Web sites and personalities that our President isn't actually a U.S. citizen, Fartgate is another shining example of how a large percentage of our media outlets are contributing to the uneducation of our society. They deliver because we clamor for such nonsense.
According to the report by USA Today on Tiger's supposed gaseous expulsion, "Tiger Woods fart," was the most searched for video on Google on Monday, and the same search term jumped to nine on the Google Trends list.
I'm making a plea to golf writers, political commentators, small town newspaper editors, basically anyone who will listen, to help stop the erosion of our intelligence by labeling such unimportant material as news. Larry the Cable Guy has a home on Comedy Central, and his humor doesn't need to be imitated by the peers of Larry Dorman, who covers golf for the New York Times.
Sure, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are valuable networking tools and they help us stay in touch with old classmates, but they're also helping to highlight trivial matters and push real news to the bottom of the page.
In a 1996 Sports Illustrated article by Gary Smith, Earl Woods, Tiger's late dad, was quoted as saying, "Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity."
Even though Tiger Woods himself giggled like a 12-year-old boy when the most infamous fart in sports history reverberated across the 18th fairway at Warwick Hills, I hope that the trivial use of his fame to promote such a silly story will serve to alert us all to the declining value of our media and inspire us to do something about it. Sure it won't change the course of humanity, but perhaps it can illuminate the path journalists need to follow to restore the value of information.