An American Lion

The driveway of one of the homes in Florida owned by Tiger Woods

How is it that someone involved in a car crash that damaged property and sent someone to the Emergency Room can tell the cops to shove it three days in a row? I would have to say that this is just too bad for you, Johnny Law. You’ve finally met the one American who doesn’t have to answer your nosy questions and put up with your nonsense. Take a walk, Johnny Law, and don’t bother coming back to the property to ask your ridiculous questions.

The only reason why the police want to talk to Tiger Woods is because they want to know what happened:

Tiger Woods says the car crash that sent him to the hospital is his fault and has become embarrassing to him and his family, and for the third straight day canceled a meeting with state troopers.

Sgt. Kim Montes of the Florida Highway Patrol said Woods’ lawyer did not reschedule the meeting.

In a statement posted Sunday on his Web site about an hour before he was meet with troopers, Woods says his wife, Elin, acted “courageously” when she saw that he was hurt. He says any other assertion is “absolutely false.”

Woods says he understands there is curiosity about the accident. He says the “malicious” rumors circulating about him and his family are irresponsible.

The world’s No. 1 golfer says he has cuts and bruising and is “pretty sore.”

Woods and his wife were expected to talk to police for the first time Sunday, breaking a two-day silence that has only fueled speculation about his early morning accident, why he left the house at that hour, where he was going and whether an argument preceded the crash.

Montes said FHP investigations into minor collisions don’t normally drag on for days, but this isn’t the first time that one has stretched on.

“It’s unusual, but I will say it’s happened before,” Montes said Sunday. “This is not the first time that we’ve gone back to get a statement from a driver. … We try and give the driver every opportunity to tell us their side of the story before we complete our investigation.”

She has said Woods is not required to give a statement, only his driver’s license, insurance and registration of the SUV, which was towed to a private yard with damage to the front and both back-seat windows broken.

Give me a break. The favoritism being granted here is blatantly obvious to anyone with a sense of fairness. If Tiger Woods just happened to be anyone else, and yes, there’s a racial subtext here that makes the debate ugly on purpose, so I won’t go there, the cops would have carried him out of his home in handcuffs, bloody lump on his head, optional. People in this country are arrested and taken to jail every day for a whole lot less than destroying property in the middle of the night after failing to negotiate something as difficult as a driveway (the one pictured above probably isn’t the one, but still). Contrast this with how Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was treated and then get back to me on how the cops in that particular part of Florida aren’t walking around on their knees, ready to do the bidding of the wealthy. Whoops, I went there. Well, let me say this—if this was Jack Nicklaus or John Daly, I would feel exactly the same way. Race shouldn’t matter, but, because of all that has happened in this country, it does matter. Too bad we can’t subtract it from this story entirely.

Tiger Woods is in trouble, but the law won’t catch up to him, thanks to his money. Remember that the next time someone lectures you about how we’re all equal in the eyes of the law.