GANGSTA GOLFER? The latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine arrived in mailboxes this week, graced with a cover shot of golfer Tiger Woods that has to be seen to be believed. Although the Annie Liebovitz shot was taken in 2006, long before his sex scandal broke, it appears that Woods was eager to show off a side of himself that was in stark contrast to that the public had fallen in love with. On the cover he is shirtless, buff and wearing a knit ski cap pulled low over his ears, glaring at the camera while holding a barbell in each hand. Judging by the moody lighting and absence of sweat, the shot appears to have been posed, not snapped during a workout.
The married (at least for a little while longer) Woods now reportedly is undergoing treatment for sex addiction at a rehab center in Mississippi. Perhaps the best summation of Wood's predicament comes courtesy of Buzz Bissinger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who authored the Vanity Fair essay.
As he put it during an online Washington Post chat session with the public this month, "Tiger has many flaws as we know, but one of them was having sex with women with nothing to lose. It always comes back to bite you in the butt."
PRETTY-BOY JOHN EDWARDS is back in the news this week, belatedly admitting that yes, he fathered his girlfriend Rielle Hunter's baby. Edwards, whose wife is still battling breast cancer, earlier had also denied that he and Hunter were involved with each other. The big theme of Edwards' failed presidential campaign was that there are two Americas - a rich one and a poor one. Well, there are two kinds of politicians, too. The kind that make every effort to be open and honest with the public, even if it does their career no good. And then there's the kind that acts one way in public and acts another way in private, and thinks he (or in a few cases, she) can get away with it forever.
Sorry. In cases like these, the politician's real persona always gets "outed," sooner or later - sometimes, not even until after they're dead, as with JFK. And like with Edwards, it's usually pretty ugly.
ONE MORE WORD ABOUT OBAMACARE, which now (keep your fingers crossed) is about to be unplugged from life support. As has been noted, the Democrats were using 14 years of revenues but only 10 years of expenses to project that it would not break the bank. That makes as much sense - and is about as dishonest - as determining a football coach's effectiveness by compiling his won-lost record based on how many games he won during a full 14-game season - and how many games he lost during the first 10 games of that season. How logical is that?
RETIRED SLUGGER MARK MCGWIRE finally has admitted the obvious: Yes, he used steroids. Well, duh! What's sad is that it seems to make no difference to many of his fans, even though he essentially cheated his way to stardom. Pete Rose bet on baseball, but never bet against his own team. In my book, what Rose did is a lesser offense than what McGwire and his fellow 'roid abusers did, and are doing. I'd say that Rose has paid penance long enough and that having finally admitted that yes, he bet on baseball, he belongs in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. McGwire? Never. Keep him in the Hall of Shame.
I SEE WHERE THE DOMINO'S pizza chain is now admitting the pizzas that it sold for decades tasted kind of lousy, particularly the crusts. I would agree with that assessment and would argue that I'm due some refund money - if it weren't for the fact that even lousy pizza usually tastes pretty darned good. Including Domino's.
Joe Kirby is Editorial Page Editor of the Marietta Daily Journal and co-author of the new "Then & Now: Marietta Revisited."
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