Tiger top in funny business

OPINION:  Laughter, said Gerald Samper, is the whole of wisdom, writes Joe Bennett this week.

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 NZRU. Late one night last week I poured myself a nightcap of $5.99 shiraz, slumped on the sofa and turned on the television 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 of them equally loved by the Lord, who also prayed for the pope's intercession, but died.

Yet neither of these giggle-fests can hold a candle to the winner. If ever there was a shoo-in for the Laughter award 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 his Obama-like appearance of hygienic multi-racial decency, they pounced on him. They paid him millions to endorse their stuff.

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, that he was a lying commercial whore. But rather 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 adult society is founded on self-restraint. As a philosophy "just do it" is a charter for theft, rape, murder and terrorist attacks on golf courses.

Then it emerged that 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 exploit the cheapest labour they can find and employ the most dishonest advertising they can get away with in order to make as much money as they can. 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 for the way it illustrates contemporary superstition, hypocrisy and primitive incoherence, it's a pleasure to award the inaugural Laughter Trophy to the Saga of Tiger Woods.

The chicken that was given reiki, by the way, died.

» Joe Bennett is an English-born travel writer and columnist who lives in New Zealand with dogs. His columns are syndicated in newspapers throughout New Zealand.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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