Did 'SNL' Tiger Woods sketch go too far?

A veteran TV writer weighs in on the controversial Tiger sketch

Anyone who thinks SNL's Tiger-Elin sketch makes light of spousal abuse needs a good smack.

OK, that line wasn't funny. Mocking domestic violence isn't funny. Then again, SNL wasn't mocking domestic violence when Blake Lively's Elin Nordegren roughed up Kenan Thompson's Tiger Woods on Saturday night. They were playing up the story's rumored dog-bites-man twist, where a waifish, driver-wielding ex-bikini model gets physical with her built-like-an-NFL-safety hound-dog husband. Funny? That's subjective. (The show's seen better seasons, as last month's five-Cadillac pileup with host January Jones proves.) But Elin ripping Tiger a new golf hole is 100 percent fair game for satire.

Many disagree. Anti-abuse advocates said the sketch made light of spousal abuse. EW.com wrote that "intimate partner violence isn't a ripe source of material in the first place, but with [abuse-victim] Rihanna as the musical star the sketch seemed even more poorly thought out." And according to PopEater, "[H]ad the genders been reversed, 'SNL' wouldn't make light of the potentially violent situation." Of course not. The story is satire-worthy because the roles are reversed. 

Veteran TV writer (and 12-handicap) Eric Weinberg, whose credits include Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, echoes that point. His take on the Tiger sketch: 

"Spousal abuse is never funny, just like the Holocaust is never funny and slavery is never funny," Weinberg says. "Except that they were actually pretty funny in The Producers and Blazing Saddles. What's the lesson? Maybe that old Mel Brooks movies are funnier than today's SNL. Or that comedy is getting safer. A sketch like this would've been controversial only if it was Tiger who'd beaten up Elin. It's a comedic double-standard but an understandable one, much the same way we can joke about female teachers seducing their 14-year-old male students but not the other way around. Comedy has a decades-long tradition—Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Maher and Chris Rock, among others—of testing boundaries, of walking up to the line and occasionally stepping over it. If you play it safe, you don't make many enemies, but you don't get a lot of laughs. And if you don't believe that, watch George Lopez."