Medicating Falstaff

If you even vaguely pay attention to sports in North America or the UK, then you know who John Daly is. If you don't, suffice to say that he is one of the best golfers on the PGA Tour, has won majors, but hasn't done so hot in recent years. He's legendary, of course, for being a man of considerable appetites--women, drugs, alcohol, gambling, all the fun stuff. For the last decade or so, people have spent a lot of time trying to make Daly into a clean-cut role model and his moodiness ended up with him being on anti-depressants. Here's what Daly had to say about that on 60 Minutes last night:

"He says his life began to turn around after he decided to ignore all of the advice to go back to rehab, to quit gambling and taking anti-depressants.

"I took myself off all this medication I was on, that doctors were putting me on. Prescribing, 'You gotta do this, you gotta do that.' And I looked in the mirror one day, I said, 'One thing you gotta do, John, let's take care of John for now,'" he recalls. "I used to look in the mirror and flip myself off, and now I can look in the mirror and say, 'Hey, you're alright, you're alright today, man.'"

As a nation, America likes to luck its tongue at people like Daly. Bad boy. He must be reformed and so on. Yet, what was most striking about the bit on Daly--aside from his annoyance with meds--is how honest he is about himself, how little he cares about winning big tourneys and how comfortable he is with being himself, despite being what many tongue cluckers would consider a loser. Besides, isn't the idea of medicating someone like Daly a bit like trying to medicate Shakespeare's Falstaff?

I'll take one Falstaff over 100 tongue cluckers any day. Falstaffs are more fun. And more human when it's all said and done.