Paul Sheehan, and a scold's bridle for the common scold ...

(Above: Murdersville, The Avengers, in which Mrs. Peel finds herself in a quaint, stuffy, English village, finds herself reading Paul Sheehan, dresses in knightly gear, gets in a pie fight, and ends up wearing a chastity belt and a scold's bridle).

I'm not sure whether my favourite word is gossip monger, or newsmonger or rumour monger or blabbermouth or talebearer or taleteller or tattler or tattletale or telltale, or yenta - Yiddish for a woman who talks too much, a gossip unable to keep a secret, a woman who spreads rumours and scandal.

Whatever. It's always nice to add a few adjectives - salacious, lip smacking, prurient, mother grundy, common, tawdry, sordid, puritan, sex-obsessed, anal retentive - to help capture the tone and the feel of the said gossip mongering or tale tattling.

Get a good assortment together, and then you end up evoking, or describing, or chastising Paul Sheehan, and his column Tiger would, wouldn't he?

At vast and bizarre length, Sheehan recycles in an old woman way all the current dirt he can find about Tiger Woods, under a variety of headings including hubris, stupidity, deception, hypocrisy, duplicity, cruelty, absurdity, banality, self-pity, irony, sleaziness, cowardice, vanity and greed.

Woods' crimes? He plays golf fairly well, is filthy rich, has cheated on his wife many times, and likes to fuck all kinds of women, including blondes.

Paul Sheehan's crimes? Envy, bitterness, despair, spite, malice, gutter trawling, sleazoid tabloid thinking, and the desire to lop tall poppies in a splenetic way.

By the end of the read, you'd think that Woods had done an O.J. and killed a woman and her lover, or perhaps done a Phil Spector and invited a woman home to play with his gun, by shoving it in her face and pulling the trigger.

Instead of displaying a capacity to fuck like a rabbit in rutting season, and avoid telling the world, his wife or his sponsors about it.

Second thoughts, scrub all those other words. Let's just think of Sheehan as a common scold.

Here's my suggestion for the common scold:

What's that you say? It's only for unseemly, clucking, busybody gossiping old women? You can see a difference with Paul Sheehan? Please explain.

You do the crime, you do the time.

Want a funny take on Tiger Woods? Instead of wasting time with the bilious, embittered Sheehan, why not trot off to read Gail Collins' The Joys of Political Sex.

Sheehan is, it seems clear to me now, a snarky git, totally devoid of humor, and full of deep abiding hatreds and resentments, whereas Collins clearly likes a laugh as she writes about the way Senator Max Baucus of Montana has dodged a scandal thanks to Tiger Woods:

But, no, it’s been Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods. How much can you say about a guy who golfs? A politician with a compulsively wandering eye is not just a hound dog with a famous name. He’s a commentary about our judgment as voters, and the viability of our social standards. Plus, gossiping about him almost brings some useful information about the political process into the conversation. What would any of us know about how impeachment works if it hadn’t been for Monica Lewinsky?

I just cannot get excited about sexual misbehavior that is never going to be investigated by a legislative committee.

Or why not read spritely Annabel Crabb on the Mike Rann affair, back when she wrote for the SMH, with the header Depressing truth of Mike Rann's 'icky' business:

I had thought I might be able to conclude my days peacefully without developing an acquaintanceship with the ins and outs of Mike Rann's sexual fantasies, as depicted in the television interview by Ms Chantelois.

And now, any plans I ever had to rent the Richard Gere movie Unfaithful are just completely dashed, which is pretty devastating.

Next week from Sheehan? Expect a pious bout of righteous indignation about the way the bloody mob of hypocrites in the media pry in to people's private lives. He's nothing if not consistently inconsistent ...

Second thoughts, if Sheehan is going to go about clucking over and dunking Tiger Woods in the dirt - so many adulterers, so little time - how about he gets a free ride on a cucking stool?