“Christianity Is for Rubes; Buddhism Is for Actors”: U.S. Media Representations of Buddhism in the Wake of the Tiger Woods’ Scandal

Buddhism was here deployed in the service of a pre-existing narrative of conflict between conservatives and liberals and, by making appeals to secular scholars to define Buddhism, Buddhist voices were obscured or ignored. Finally, despite having their own media outlets, U.S. Buddhists were unable to effectively counter such representations either by perpetuating pre-existing media narratives nor by ignoring them altogether.