The written word has always had a habit of getting folk into bother.
Ever since early man made a crude etching of a bison on the side of the cave wall and scrawled 'Jeanie's a wee cracker' next to it in a sarcastic reference to the head of the tribe's rotund wife, before his woolly-backed impudence was punished by 50 lashes with the fossilised beak of a Pterodactyl, our reckless scribblings have caused no end of strife.
Do we ever learn? Not one bit. What's the point in harbouring a grievance if you can't commit it to print and whip up a stooshie, after all. In many ways, we have moved on from those prehistoric times, although a waddle round the Glasgow howffs at chucking-out time can still reveal evidence that basic guttural grunting continues to be a viable means of communication.
These days, word gets round quicker than you can mumble a caveman-style "ugh". When Brandel Chamblee, the US analyst with the name that sounds more like a nice bottle of French white wine, put down his reflections of the 2013 season in Golf Magazine, he seemed to light the blue touch paper with a flaring stick of dynamite. Unless you've been hiding in your cave over these past couple of days, it's been difficult to ignore the growing frenzy surrounding Chamblee's thoughts on a certain Tiger Woods.
Without actually saying the dreaded word "cheat", the former PGA Tour winner and Golf Channel pundit gave a mightily strong indication that, in his eyes at least, that is just what Woods is. And that - the questioning of someone's professional ethics in the public domain - is decidedly dangerous territory upon which to tread.
Chamblee, who could now be facing a lawsuit having ruffled some fairly powerful feathers, gave Woods an "F" in an end-of-season report card of tour players and went into an elaborate recollection about his own school days when he was caught cheating in a fourth-grade maths exam and related all of this to Woods. He concluded his withering assessment of the world No.1 with the statement: "how shall we say this, he [Woods] was a little cavalier with the rules".
Cheat or just careless? It has certainly not been a vintage year for Woods on the rules front. He's had about as many infringements (four) as he has had PGA Tour wins (five) during the campaign and has been docked a total of six shots for a trio of two-shot penalties in Abu Dhabi, at the Masters and in the BMW Championship. Under the unflinching gaze of the camera, Woods' on-course manoeuvrings are scrutinised like no other's and, of all the players, you'd think he would be as scrupulous as could be. Ignorance is not bliss in this game. His Masters faux pas in April was particularly dubious and, in the aftermath, Chamblee fulminated that "this has cast a dark shadow over his entire career". After his approach to Augusta's 15th rattled the flag and trundled back into the water, Woods' options were either to drop in the original spot or on the line of entry. He dropped a couple of yards back from the original spot and then revealed on television what, at the time, came across as a slightly sneaky interpretation of the law which enabled him to give himself a more precise yardage.
"It worked out perfectly," he smiled. After a viewer phoned in to inform officials of the dodgy drop, chaos ensued the next day. Woods was docked two shots for signing a wrong score card while an elaborate explanation involving "exceptional" circumstances was trotted out by the besieged hierarchy.
While the Rules Committee was savaged for bumbling incompetence, many suggested Woods should have toppled on his sword and disqualified himself amid the maelstrom. It would have been the honourable thing to do and would have calmed the storm. Instead, he played on and, as peering eyes narrowed with suspicion, critics bemoaned the fact that his actions challenged the very belief at the heart of the game that golf, with its core values of honesty and self-policing, is different from the rest.
We have to remember that it was this Royal & Ancient pursuit's image of purity that allowed Woods to develop a vast, wealthy empire from his own manufactured portrayal as a sportsman of unblemished personal integrity. When all the skeletons came rattling out of his closet, and his extra-curricular activities were laid bare, the majority of big-money sponsors and backers who had previously basked in the radiant glow quickly distanced themselves from him.
Only Nike, adopting the role of Tammy Wynette, stood by their man and, as Woods slowly emerged from the rubble of his personal, physical and professional collapse, those canny advertising gurus made the most of the renaissance this season by rehashing his old quote "Winning takes care of everything".
Chamblee clearly doesn't think so, of course. Everybody is entitled to an opinion but he is sailing extremely close to the wind with this incendiary implication. We've probably not heard the last of this.
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