Tiger and The Queen

During a late-night feeding with my daughter last night, I flipped on the TV and found "The Queen" starring Helen Mirren. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the role and after watching for a few minutes, I know why. Mirren is one of our finest actresses, overshadowed by Meryl Streep's greatness, but I would put her in the same league.

"The Queen" in the title is Britain's Elizabeth II, and the movie focuses much more on her reaction to Princess Diana's death than I realized. Tony Blair is the film's hero as it purports that he was reading the public sentiment perfectly while the queen and her husband Prince Phillip continued to disparage Diana even in death.

More than the dynamic of that situation, however, the film reminded me of the recent Tiger Woods media frenzy. In both situations, very powerful public figures misjudged the mood of the masses and created public relations nightmares for themselves. Both stonewalled the media and insisted that the media and the masses bend to their wills and their interpretations of the situation. In both cases, the strategy backfired horribly and the reputations of the public figures took a massive hit.

Elizabeth eventually relented and the people let her off the hook. Tiger has inched out of his cocoon, but has not yet fully come clean. Personally, I doubt he ever will.

For me, the lessons I took away from these somewhat similar situations are twofold:

1. Even without the Internet and the tabloid-reporting media frenzy (Diana died in 1997 at the cusp of the Internet's primacy), overwhelming media and public pressure could still hold sway over someone as powerful as the British monarch. So, the pressure Tiger Woods is experiencing is not completely a function of TMZ and its Internet ilk.

2. Was the queen wrong to change her position and is Tiger right in protecting his? Both of them formed rational arguments for their refusals to cave to public pressure. In the end, what do they owe us? What do they owe the public or the media? One might argue the queen has more of an obligation to the public than Tiger; after all, she represents the British people. However, by the very nature of her title, a monarch is not required to bend to the people whims. She is not elected and she is by birthright a higher level of being. By his performance on the golf course, Tiger Woods has made himself a higher leve of being, as well. What do these higher level of beings owe us mere mortals?

In the queen's case, she eventually felt her lack of empathy for Diana's death was a threat to her monarchy and relented. Whether she went through a personal conversion, we cannot know, although "The Queen" certainly indicates she did. Either way, she certainly understood the political realities she faced.

For Tiger, it all depends on how he feels he can best resume his position as a super-mortal in our society. Does full disclosure bring him too close to us so that his aura will never be the same? Or does his refusal to bring himself down to our levels leave him forever inaccessible and forever vanquished? Will he stick with his convictions and consequences be damned?

As I said, I don't count on Tiger going all Mark Sanford on us. But neither did I think Elizabeth II would capitulate to the pressures of the masses. Time will tell if our golfing king will ride this out as smoothly as the British queen.