There's many a slip twixt brain and mouth!
Ah, Kelly...you'd have got away with it anywhere but in the States. A throwaway line as the mouth reacts to the first thing the brain pumps out can sometimes be, at best, ineffectual. At worst, it can cost you your livelihood.
For those of you visiting planet Zog earlier this month, here's a brief resumé of the now infamous 'lynching' comment by Golf Channel presenter, Kelly Tilghman. As day two of the Mercedes Championship in Hawaii drew to a close, she and Nick Faldo were discussing, in vision, the thankless task facing today's young golfers - i.e. trying to close the gap on Tiger Woods.
Says a smiling Nick "To take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up for a while...until..." Instant quip from Kelly... "Lynch him in a back alley!", she laughs. And so does Nick.
Now, if Kelly had been a newspaper or magazine journalist, she'd never have considered using the offending verb. Or if she'd typed it - on the spur of the moment - she'd soon have deleted it. And even if she hadn't, there's still the, hopefully, fail-safe procedure along the production line of the alert sub-editor, whose red pen would surely have been wielded. But, live telly, Kelly - that's something entirely different. You're on your own, and a few ill-chosen words can haunt whatever the rest of your career shapes up to be.
As so often happens in these incidents, nothing would probably have transpired, except a Long Island sociology lecturer emailed a complaint to the TV station - and, more significantly, the New York newspaper, Newsday - who, in low-key fashion, reported it well down a sports page (a scoop - and they didn't even know it!).
Inevitably, in this internet-driven world, it was picked up, and virus-like, the story seeped into every editorial outlet, including the ubiquitous YouTube. That pillar of compassion and fair-mindedness, the Rev. Al Sharpton, stopped short of calling for Kelly to be lynched, but he certainly wanted her sacked.
"Lynching isn't murder in general - it's a specific racial term that this woman should be held accountable for. It's an insult to all blacks."
Now, the 37-year-old telegenic Tilghman (that's the PC way, these days, of saying glamorous or attractive) did apologise - but it took a long time coming. If, as the Golf Channel tell us, she regretted the comment right away, it took from Friday afternoon, through a four-hour transmission on Saturday, to final transmission on the Sunday for her to face viewers and express her deep regret.
The irony is that she's known Tiger for 10 years or so, and he asked her recently to do a golf club demo near his home in Florida. Hardly surprisingly his agent said they considered the matter closed.
"Tiger and Kelly are friends...and we know unequivocally there was no ill-intent in her comments."
I'd love to know how long it took the Golf Channel, reacting like any corporate body fearful for its integrity, to sculpt the craven press release that quarantined Tilghman's half-dozen words as if they were this millennium's Great Plague.
"There is simply no place on our network for offensive language like this. While we believe Kelly's choice of words were (sic) inadvertent, and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner, the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate. Consequently we have decided to suspend Kelly for two weeks, effective immediately."
At the time of writing, she's been absent from the Sony Open, and will miss the five-day Bob Hope Classic in Palm Springs, replaced by her very competent predecessor, Rich Lerner.
Kelly tells us in her biography on the Golf Channel's website that she tried her hand as a golf professional in Asia and Europe, but didn't seem to set the heather alight. Anybody remember her? She certainly played as a student at Duke University in North Carolina, and now claims a handicap of six.
Have your say on Ron's Rocket. What do you think of the Golf Channel's reaction to Kelly Tilghman's comments? And any info on Kelly as a European golf pro? Email ron.marshall@ntlworld.com