Out with the old and in with the new. Rachel Uchitel, Tiger Wood's original alleged mistress, is passé - picked over and spit out by the constantly churning news cycle. The media appetite is insatiable and the chick wasn't feeding the needy. Denials make nice media appetizers but, eventually, the producers and reporters want to sink their teeth into something meaty. On cue, entering from stage left is mistress number two, Jamiee Grubbs the 24 year old cocktail waitress, who claims to have had a 31 month affair with Woods and is delivering a hot dish of sex, lies and audio tape -- the steak and potatoes the media has been waiting to feast on. And fresh off the wire, as I write this is, is news of a third woman from Las Vegas. Just in...this is Tiger's worse week ever and the week is still young. And spare me the jokes like his new name is Cheetah Woods. It's not funny. Okay, just a little bit.

I think the saying goes that "sometimes the cover up is worse than the crime". True. But let me float another possibility that sometimes the coverage is actually worse than the crime. And maybe even sometimes there is NO crime at all, unless grand larceny of the heart is now a prosecutable offense. The private affairs of celebrities, such as Tiger Woods, have turned what once were respectable news organizations into gossip ambulance chasers. Why else is a prominent cable news network captioning "What really happened last night"? The media has become piranhas in the water circling their prey; in this case it's a man who appears to have a weakness for women and got his hand caught in the cookie jar. Wow. Interrupt regularly scheduled programming and tell us more.

Look, I'm guessing that Tiger and Elin's private business is what happened that night out in front of their Florida estate. He got accused of cheating, the scorned spouse went 'Desperate Housewife' on him and bashed in his windows with a golf iron during his slow speed escape causing him to wreck the white Bronco black Escalade. And I imagine that Elin was screaming something like "live by the golf club, die by the golf club you Caubinlasian bastaarrrrd!!!"



Shortly thereafter the police arrived and the bad episode of COPS went full tilt, only this time in some affluent suburb outside Orlando, complete with Tiger's incoherent gibberish going on about "leave her 'lone officer..she didn't do anything...she's a good woman". You know the script. That's pretty much what happened most of us surmise.

And here's what else we know. As certain as the sun rises tomorrow morning, two things will happen in 2010. Elin and/or Tiger will end up having their obligatory come to Jesus Oprah moment. It's the hot glare of the public cathartic moment with the ever cool queen of daytime that celebrities and celebrity wives can't seem to turn down. And as for the alleged mistresses, one of them will end up flashing it all for a Playboy pictorial, which I'll stumble across while reading the articles. It will happen. The accomplices and secondary players always try to cash in their 15 minutes of infamy. It's the parasitic nature of popular culture.

The whole thing is really a spectacle. Parading the private lives of public figures through the media circus has, unfortunately, become the main entrée of newsrooms. Men will be men, for sure, and members of the media will be members of the media; quick to search and destroy despite their own personal skeletons and hypocrisies. This is true for ordinary citizens too, who jump at the opportunity to pass judgment. Next time we hear glass shatter, we'll have to wonder if it's Elin Woods going ballistic again or is it the media and members of the public throwing rocks from inside their glass houses.

Mason Jamal writes about issues pertaining to the style, substance and sensibilities of men (and sometimes women). For more of his musings, you can visit www.MasonSays.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @masonsays.