It's no big secret that we find physical anguish hilarious. Slipping on a banana peel (or some such) will always get you a laugh. A pie in the face? Painful and humiliating—a double yuck. And although I never quite got Steve Martin's arrow-through-the-head bit, clearly it worked.
But a nine iron to the head, a broken arm, and accidentally getting run over by a car? Despite sounding a lot like vintage Tom and Jerry unfortunately this mad cap romp through the Orange County Sheriff's domestic incident reports is the real life drama of one Tiger Woods featured in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch this past weekend.
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No one (but Tiger and his wife Elin) knows what really happened on November 27th, but the made-for-late-night-tv story goes like this: After finding out that her husband has cheating on her with a Vegas vixen Tiger's Nordic-blooded wife leaves him bruised, bandaged, run-over and who knows what else. In the sketch that aired this Saturday, Tiger holds several press conferences to apologize for his "personal failings" but try as he might the pro golfer keeps saying the wrong thing—angering the blonde bionic woman standing in the background and prompting yet another beat down. Fun-ny.
What's even more off color than the show's choice to make light of domestic abuse is its choice of musical guest—Rihanna. Yes, that Rihanna. The one who recently spoke so eloquently about the violence she suffered less than a year ago at the hands of pop star Chris Brown. Last week Brown, possibly the last person on earth with any moral authority, had this to say about Tiger's situation: "wow..the world is so onesided..case closed?..just like that." Now, I hate to say Mr. Brown has a point, but in the case of the classless SNL sketch the young man doth protest enough.
—HELENA "I'm Scared" ANDREWS
Helena Andrews is a contributing editor at The Root and author of Bitch Is the New Black, a memoir in essays. Follow her on Twitter.
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