In my list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2013, I suggested pissing someone off as a possible goal. If you do it, though, don’t use Sergio Garcia as an example.
The Spanish golfer recently got into hot water over a comment about Tiger Woods. Garcia and Woods apparently have never exactly been BFFs. Garcia didn’t help anyone out, including himself, with his response to a reporter’s question about if he would invite Woods over for dinner to reconcile.
I am not offended that Garcia said, “We will have him around every night. We will serve fried chicken.” I do have to ask, did he really need to go there? To borrow a line from Dr. Laura, who has been known to piss off a few people here and there, did he really need to die on that hill?
Being offensive is a gamble that sometimes pays off. Right or wrong, when Jewish comedienne Sarah Silverman referred to “the alleged Holocaust”, she got laughs. She broke a true taboo, and has built her career on that sort of humor. In Garcia’s case, though, making jokes about black people and fried chicken isn’t breaking a taboo; it’s just old. Yeah, Lee Ermey did it in “Full Metal Jacket”, but it was part of his character. Besides, he’s Lee Ermey, he can do whatever he wants.
Tiger Woods isn’t a particularly sympathetic individual; he certainly could have handled the situation with a little more humor. Perhaps in time, he may learn to laugh at himself; perhaps Garcia may learn to take more calculated gambles when it comes to off-color jokes. Until then, he serves as a great example of how not to do it.
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