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Uchitel teaches Tiger a lesson

August 24th 2010 03:15
rachel uchitel

VYOOS EDITORIAL

The shameless milking of a situation for notoriety and profit is something that Rachel Uchitel understands. For her, it’s not a matter of social conscience or philosophy. For Rachel, it’s a career move.

Rachel Uchitel was the first woman named in the never-ending Tiger Woods transgression story. Her name sits atop what turned out to be a long list.


Her name has been popping up ever since. We are not saying she receives money every time she is interviewed. Just most of them. Call it a nice return for her investment in a few steamy sessions with that randy philanderer Woods.

It’s a game she knows how to play well – or at least the pack of piranhas which gathers around the Rachel Uchitels of this world knows how to play.

The game is to tell all, bit by tantalising, lucrative bit. Facts are convenient if they fit; much more important is a plentiful supply of anecdotes, comments, advice and post-coital reflection.

Scripted scruples.

For a price.

Then you wait for the phone to ring, which it will do every time Tiger does something newsworthy. Such as mishit a drive. Such as have another bogey-laden misstep in the track back to Superstardom. Such as finalising his divorce.

That’s what happened yesterday when Woods and Elin Nordegren and a large number of lawyers met in a Florida court to sign off on their split.


“We are sad that our marriage is over and we wish each other the very best for the future,'' they said in a statement released by the lawyers (Nordegren reportedly had eight of them present).

What the statement didn’t make clear is the settlement details. Guesses so far range between $US100 and $500 million.

Did someone mention money? Back to Rachel Uchitel who, piranha-like, smelled an opportunity, scripted and polished something sellable to say, and released a statement of her own, through a lawyer of her own.

“Tiger can begin again but he should never forget the human wreckage that he has left behind and the fact that he has still not been fully accountable for the suffering that he has inflicted on women,” said Rachel.

“He has broken his wife's heart and the hearts of many others. His apparent lack of honesty in his relationships doomed his marriage and caused a break that could not be repaired.''

Oh really? Rachel, we know you have heard this before, but you knew he was married, you knew he had two small children, and you bonked him anyway. It takes two to philander. By what bizarre extension of logic do you now find it plausible to preach morals to him?

Our advice to you is to get a new press writer. The above is way too transparent, showing, as it does, a woman as bereft of common sense as she is of consideration.

It’s one thing to understand the shameless milking of a situation for notoriety and profit. It’s another to do it consistently well. Keep producing this kind of twaddle, Rachel, and you may have to look for a new career move.





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Celebrity pickings

June 8th 2010 05:47
sarah ferguson duchess of york

VYOOS EDITORIAL

As the dust was settling recently on Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and the revelation that she had been caught in a tabloid sting offering to sell access to her former husband, Prince Andrew, for 500,000 pounds, she knew she had to do something.

Essentially, she had two choices.

The first was to get into a huddle with her coterie and map out a damage control plan. The usual celebrity thing: remorse, sob story, hint of depression. A friend in need is a plus. Grains of truth here and there are helpful. Real tears are a bonus if you're good enough to squeeze them out on cue.

The plan is to let people see you are human. If you get some actual sympathy, that's nice, but the real purpose of the plan is to complicate the picture with a colourful panorama of personal tribulations upon which people can focus, in the same way they enjoy focusing on train wrecks.

And so you deflect attention, with some small embarrassments, from the big embarrassment.

Fergie will have amongst her group of hangers-on some who are expert in the strategy of confession. Done well enough, they will know, it can generate significant media interest of its own, and where there's media interest, there is income generation potential.

Delighted to offer 24-hour photographic exclusivity. For a consideration.

This is the choice, as we all know, that Fergie made. No surprise there. And the cornerstone of the plan was an appearance on Oprah Winfrey's couch. Lights, camera, tears. Thanks
Fergie, have to run now and check the ratings figures.

Of course, there are drawbacks with this damage control strategy. A big one is that Joe and Josephine Public have an annoying habit of, at times, not buying the story. A second is that the media is absolutely, consummately, unabashedly two-faced. You can bask one day, and boil the next.

The Duchess, it seems, struck out this time on both counts. It has been reported that pretty much every media organisation with an internet presence and a public comments facility has been inundated with fuming Joes and Josephines who were very unimpressed with the Oprah performance.

"I found it painful to watch," wrote one.

"I did not feel that she was sincere and I felt that she was on a mission to save her public identity and the proceeds that come from such," wrote another.

"Everyone is talking about poor Sarah and her scandal," said a third. "Talk is money.
She was in NYC last week at the Book Expo promoting her children's book. Hmm, will sales go up or down?''

Ouch.

Perhaps the hardest hits were those who accused Sarah of copying Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, who had her own confessional on British TV's Panorama show at the height of her marriage woes.

And Fergie found no mercy from the world's media either. Take that uppity New York Times television reviewer Alessandra Stanley, who described Fergie's Oprah appearance as the "ritual of repentance and renewal that these celebrity makeovers require''.

Stanley added, "She is gaming the system, and Oprah is the first and obligatory step in reputation repair."

We mentioned earlier that Fergie had a second option. That option was to say, "Look, I'm sorry. I have behaved like an idiot, and I need to take a long hard look at myself."

Nah. No profit in that.
dailymail.co.uk, news.com.au


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