Tiger Woods gets a wake-up call

Well, well, well. Would ya looky here. Golf fans done went and got theyself a genuine, for real cutie-pie White boy to fawn over and don’t need wannbe Tiger Woods no more.
Tiger Woods — Mr. Don’t Call Me Black because I’m 1/32nd this, 8/16th that, and two kajillionths the other thing — is no longer their darling. Mr. I’m Just A Person With a Jones for Blue-eyed Blondes (wasn’t enough to marry one, he had to cheat on her with a bunch of identically fair-haired, built-like-a-stick bimbos) has been suddenly and summarily displaced.
Woods, one of them dyed-in-the-wool, I’m-the-only-one-on-my-block poster chillun for social acceptance, has, in fact, been socially unacceptable ever since his appetite for Aryan types came to light. (White people ain’t never gon’ be but so crazy about a colored man cravin’ after their women, not even in this day and age.) He was hanging on by a thread to his special standing as one of those exceptional folk of color. And baby, the thread just broke.
Twenty-two-year-old Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland went through this year’s U.S. Open like grain through a goose, breaking 12 records, making all kinds of money, and basking in the media glow as an authentically bland superstar complete with smarmy smile, looking so Wheaties and Wonderbread wholesome you’d swear butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Sports marketing expert Kevin Adler, president of Engage Marketing, told the New York Post, ”[McIlroy is] the image sponsors want for the young end of the luxury market.” That man was not just beating his gums.
Well-heeled America couldn’t wait to finally turn its back on Tiger Woods but ain’t have nowhere to, well, to turn to. They got someplace now, and you can bet the ranch on that. Tiger Woods don’t have to lose any more sleep about folk callin’ him Black. Hell, he’ll be lucky if he gets called at all.
That sound of rushing wind is sponsors and corporate execs who want Rory McIlroy to endorse their products tripping over themselves to throw baskets of cash at this kid. You can already hear them in their swanky offices, swinging multi-million-dollar deals to rub up next to McIlroy, talkin’ ’bout “Tiger who?”
By the time Rory McIlroy’s agent gets done snatching up lucrative endorsement deals for his or her client, watching with a you-know-what-eating grin as the young fella’s star shoots across the skies of international fame and fortune, Tiger Woods will consider himself doing well if he can get his face on a bag of Purina Dog Chow. Oh, to be a fly on the wall as he strolls around his mansion, restlessly moving from room to room, but just can’t keep reality from settling in.
Things ain’t what they used to be.  It’s no longer possible to wallow and luxuriate in self-denial about how White he thinks he is. Not when the real deal has come along, shunting him from stage center to the sidelines.
God, what I wouldn’t give to see the look on Tiger Woods’ face as he stares into a mirror and, for once in his life, actually sees the face looking back at him.

Dwight Hobbes welcomes reader responses to dhobbes@spokes man-recorder.com.