30 Minutes

What happens when you are famous for something because is associated with something bad. The kind of infamy that goes along with a merger that goes wrong and costs millions of dollars or a television program which takes on a new time slot and its failure becomes the tipping point resulting in the network tanking. Once it gets reported in the media, a public face becomes associated with it. This paragraph in the NYT got me started to think about this...

If Steve Case, the former head of AOL, was the public face of that failed merger, the public face of the proposed NBC-Comcast deal could well be Jay Leno.

The thought that Uchitel may become the face of America's latest home wrecking hottie seems to be a done deal. Having done an Internet search on Rachel, her story is more interesting and complicated than that. Which doesn't mean much in the limited attention span of American pop culture. The case of Rachel Uchitel, this alleged affair with Tiger Woods has thrust her into a temporary notoriety that she had a sample of when she became an icon around the world, looking for a loved one during 9/11.
Rachel Uchitel became an innocent victim on 9/11 when her husband to be died in the South Tower of the World Trade Towers. Uchitel went into shock and was walking around dazed, putting up posters of her missing lover outside of Bellevue Hospital, the press and the paparazzi capturing her in her pain. This is how Rachael describes her first brush with the first instalment of her fame...

Soon, a bunch of photographers approached me and asked me who I was looking for. The next thing I knew I was on the cover of every newspaper in the world. It was good to have my most vulnerable moment photographed like that because it meant people wanted to know who Andy was, they wanted to help find him. Receiving hundreds of letters of support made me feel as if I wasn't going through this alone.

Rachel would end up married a couple of years later, there has been talk of an affair with married actor David Boreanaz and rumors of a romance with Stephen Dorff. She will have another 15 minutes of fame, in an Ashlee Dupre kind of way. She has been quoted in a interview that she said, I will never kiss and tell.
I am willing to bet that in an alternative future, one without 9/11 maybe, Mrs Rachael O'Grady would not know her 30 minutes of fame, the pain of the loss of a loved one, a marriage that didn't work out and this madness because maybe she had sex with a handsome, wealthy married athlete. The only notoriety that this woman would know is that of a beautiful woman from random men noticing her wedding band. After her first marriage, Rachael wrote that despite losing Andy, I had been able to find someone else whom I could love. I don't doubt that she still can!
Although, she seems to be taking this situation and profiting from it, from the alleged 1 million shake down from Tiger to talks of her posing for Playboy. As Rachael takes off her clothes, it looks as if Tiger maybe taking a little break from golf.


Tiger has taken a big hit to his previous clean cut image but Dave Zirin observes, who is a political/sports writer (who I've meet, read one of his books and heard him speak, he is great!) a few of Tiger's endorsements a morally questionable, which brings his character into question even more. Dave Zirin's website is edgeofsports.com, FYI, well worth checking out.

UPDATE

Tiger is looking like he is headed towards divorce and a break from his chosen profession, professional athlete. The news that his prenup may actual hold up in court is about the only break that he has gotten since this whole scandal broke.