Fatherly fashion envy
The goal:
The result:
Clearly, there is work to be done.
(Note: that is some guy from Twilight)
The whole Tiger Wood’s dead father’s voice thing.
Bear with me, I promise this is about fatherhood.
So you’ve probably seen the new Tiger Woods Nike ad that is blazing through the internet. If you haven’t by now, you’re better off passing on this post to go waste some of your precious time reading Texts From Last Night or whatever it is you kids do these days. No? Ok then, here’s the ad:
That’s the voice of Tiger’s dead father, we think he is speaking to him, but he’s actually describing his parenting style compared to how Tiger’s mom parents.
Here is the original interview with Tiger’s father, for context:
There’s some outrage going around about this ad. When I first saw it, I thought was that it was very striking, heavy. That was followed by me thinking it was pretty tacky and in bad taste. Most people seem to fall under that second emotion. SNL covered it in this skit:
And you know, I understand the bad feelings people have about this, but I have been thinking about this more. It seems to me that there are four parties involved in this experience:
Nike- Their task was not an easy one. They could have dropped Tiger’s sponsorship, but Tiger will recover from this eventually, leaving the man who is the world’s most iconic professional athlete available for the competition to poach. Nike prides itself on having the best athletes available to them, so sadly, some poor ad exec gets charged with trying to turn a pile of crap into something palatable.
Tiger Woods- Knows he needs major image rehab, and with sponsors dropping him right and left, when someone at Nike tells him that this is the best way to help his image, he won’t trust his own judgment over the shoe giant. If I were in his position it would make a sick sort of sense, showing remorse by allowing my dead dad to chastise me.
The Audience- An audience’s experience cannot be predicted, ever. One can make educated guesses, and Nike make some of the more successful educated guesses out there. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, and this time, you can’t please many people. It would have been nearly impossible to please most of the people on this one, considering how ugly Tiger’s situation is.
And finally, Tiger’s Dad - Bringing us to why this post is about fatherhood. People can say what they want about this ad, and they would be right, but questioning whether Tiger’s father would have wanted this audio used or not seems like a no-brainer to me. Let’s say my son grows to become the elite athlete in his sport. Now let’s say, he betrays his family by sticking his peen in a bunch of ladies hoo-has (oh, and I am dead at this point). Would I be one angry-at-my-idiot-son ghost? Hells yes. Would I think that he has to man up and be responsible for his behavior, taking the licks that would definitely be going his way? Absolutely. But would I be angry that he took words that I said and used them to continue to make a living, hoping to try to salvage his image and career so that he can continue to live as a successful human and provide well for his children? No freaking way.
Future Cole, you take whatever words of mine you want if you think it will help. That’s the least I can do for you as your father, especially considering I am dead and not much help with other things. Dads help their kids when they need a hand up.
By the way, this is my favorite parody version going around. (NSFW language)
Teddy Roosevelt’s very un-manly pet name for his kid
A rare letter from Teddy Roosevelt to what was apparently his favorite son has been unearthed. From the article:
In the letter, Roosevelt addresses his son by his nickname, “Quenty-Quee,” and provides a brief glimpse into life on the trail, including a small sketch of the mule that carried his gear on the trip.
“I love you very much. Here is a picture of the mule that carries, among other things, my bag of clothes. There are about twenty mules in the pack train. They all follow one another in single file up and down mountain paths and across streams.”
The letter is signed, “Your loving father.”
What a snuggly bear, that former president of ours, huh? And while I am have recently reconciled the idea that parents do, more often than not, have favorite children (So far Cole is in first place by a wide margin in our house), it must have been a real bummer to Teddy’s other five children that it was such common knowledge that Quenty was daddy’s favorite.
I would continue to make jokes about how the name “Quentee Quee” sounds like a nickname given him by the cast of Jersey Shore, but the fact is, Quentin Roosevelt died a decorated fighter pilot during World War 1. He was twenty years old.
AW MAN This story went all sad at the end! I promise to try not to bum you out in the future.
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