There is no excuse for Tiger Woods’ DUI arrest yesterday.
If you are on a prescription medication that may send you to sleep then even if you don’t have the money to your name to hire a car, there is no excuse for you to get behind the wheel. If you are lucky enough to have money to hire the most expensive car service in the world whenever you need it, as Tiger Woods is, then the room for allowance on getting behind the wheel is even smaller, if that is possible.
It was a stupid, inconsiderate, dangerous mistake and one that Tiger Woods should be ashamed of. This is not an article defending Tiger Woods’ actions.
However, can we stop for a moment to comment upon the premature character-assassination from the media yesterday, when the news was first announced, all in the name of ‘narrative’? Yesterday, it wasn’t enough for the news of Tiger Woods’ arrest to simply be reported on as fact before waiting for more evidence to come to light. It was a chance for every writer to sharpen their tools and write the media’s favourite type of piece: The Downfall Story.
For many members of the sports media this wasn’t just a story of recklessness on Woods’ part; it was the next step in his epic, Shakespearian fall from grace, the perfect opportunity to ‘thinkpiece’ the life of out the story. Many jumped at the chance to postulate about how Woods’ appearance in his mug shot somehow held a deeper significance because of how tired and shoddy he looked in the picture (as though there is any other way to look in a DUI mug shot).
Now, arguably, these thinkpiece opinions are still valid. A DUI is a DUI no matter how you spin it and, as I said, it’s still indefensible. But after the news broke today that Woods had 0.00% alcohol in his system at the time of his arrest suddenly the narrative had to shift, at least slightly. No longer is this the classic Hollywood-esque story of the once untouchably heroic sporting figure drinking away his troubles before climbing behind the wheel of his car (the story that, make no mistake, many members of the media absolutely wanted it to be, no matter how angelically they attempted to feign empathy at Woods’ situation). Now, one cannot lazily drag up that almost mythically famous driveway incident one more time to add another piece to its apparent 8 year epilogue; the ridiculous story that so many have tried to push that Woods’ marital infidelity has been the catalyst for every trouble in his life since then (has anybody actually even attempted to explain how multiple back surgeries could possibly be a by-product of divorce?)
Now it is simply the story of a stupid and mundane mistake, one that many people who trust the power of their own body over medicine have made. And now that the incident can’t be added as easily to the ‘Tragic Downfall of Tiger Woods’ story that we have all refined over the last 8 years, it will be forgotten about, and Tiger Woods will slip back into relative obscurity again. At least until another vaguely salacious incident occurs to create another chapter in the precious narrative.
