Tiger wins Laughter Trophy; that's no miracle

BY JOE BENNETT

OPINION: Laughter, said Gerald Samper, is the whole of wisdom. And people who don't laugh, he might have added, are dangerous. They are convinced of their own rightness, and their convictions cause war, death, misery and talkback radio.

In honour of Mr Samper, I have decided to inaugurate an annual Laughter Trophy. Competition for the funniest story of the year has been intense. I have considered and discarded the Copenhagen conference, Rodney Hide, dear little Hone Harawira and a friend's sister-in-law who tried to revive a dying chicken by practising reiki on it.

Third place went to the RFU. Late one night last week I poured myself a nightcap of $5.99 shiraz, slumped on the sofa and turned on the TV for that soporific effect and was just in time to catch the nominations for Maori Player of the Year. They were Zac Guildford, Isaac Ross and Cory Jane. I laughed so loudly and long that the dog left the room and I didn't notice who won. I did notice, however, that there was no award for Player of the Year with a Smidgin of Japanese in him, nor was there a Honky Player of the Year. And I went to bed marvelling that I lived in a country still officially founded on the myth that it consists of two distinct varieties of human being who after a couple of hundred years of cohabitation remain two distinct varieties of human being.

The silver medal went to the Vatican, of course. You can always rely on the Vatican for a chuckle. Their best effort this year was to fast-track the canonisation of Pope John Paul, the Polish snogger of runways. To do so they have to prove that he engineered a miracle or two. The usual miracle is remission of cancer. The sufferer must have prayed for the pope to intercede on his behalf and hey presto, cured. All very heart- warming, except in that it excludes from the process several million other cancer sufferers, all of them good Catholics, and all equally loved by the Lord, who also prayed for the pope's intercession, but died.

Yet if ever there was a shoo-in for the Laughter Trophy it is the Tiger Woods saga. The tale illustrates so exquisitely the comic contradictions of Western corporate post-Christian culture, the culture that is so pleased with itself that it feels entitled to patronise the rest of the world, that it is worth deconstructing.

For starters, Tiger isn't a tiger. The name is a primitive form of myth-making, reminiscent of our earliest ancestors invoking animal spirits. But the myth-making has worked. Even though Tiger's only virtue is that he plays golf a bit better than anyone else, he has become revered. And the USPGA is as keen as the Vatican to foster reverence in order to make money.

Ditto the corporates. Because of Tiger's golfing prowess and Obama- like appearance of hygienic multi- racial decency, they pounced on him.

Everyone knew it was a con. They knew that Tiger was plugging Gillette or Nike only because he was paid to, and if Schick or Puma had offered him more he'd have plugged their stuff instead. Everyone knew, in short, he was a lying commercial whore. But oddly they admired him for it. And even more oddly, they bought the stuff he told them to buy.

Nike's best-known slogan is "Just do it". It aims to encourage rich people to buy running shoes made by poor people. The slogan is not supposed to be taken seriously which is just as well because peaceful a(A)dult society is founded on self-restraint. As a philosophy, "just do it" is a charter for theft, rape, murder and terror attacks.

Then it emerged Tiger had just done it. And done it and done it and done it. The result was uproar. And most of the corporates fled. They had to be seen to espouse Christian morality. But corporations are about as Christian as my dog. They employ the cheapest labour they can find and the most dishonest advertising they can get away with. Their dropping of Tiger had nothing to do with morality. It was just replacing one fib with another.

And everyone's enjoyed the whole thing. I haven't met one person who's been genuinely upset by Tiger's misbehaviour. Rather we've all delighted in stoning the godhead with jokes, not for being weak and randy, but for being caught lying. Whereas the altogether greater commercial lie that made him a godhead in the first place goes unremarked on. So it's a pleasure to award the inaugural Laughter Trophy to the Saga of Tiger Woods.

The chicken given reiki, by the way, died.

- © Fairfax NZ News