Tiger Woods Fart is Fake, But Men’s Love Of Farts Is Not

By now we’ve all heard about the famous Tiger Woods fart video, (it was a really slow news week.) It turns out it was probably a fake. It was a guy in the audience with a fart machine. (Is it an audience at a golf game?) [Ed: It's called a gallery.] He is not the first man, or even first athlete, to fart in public, so what’s the big deal? The shitstorm (ha!) that arose is probably due to people realizing that Tiger Woods is a human and not some sort of pan-ethnic golf messiah. Plus, farts are powerful things and have a long and illustrious cultural history. Men love fart jokes, fart stories, fart everything and we want to celebrate that.

The first known use of farts in literature appears in Aristophenes’ The Clouds, which contains several flatulence jokes, (it is called The Clouds.) The 1001 Arabian Nights contains a story called The Historic Fart in which a man flees the country after letting a beefy one rip at his wedding. He returns ten years later to learn that his fart had become so famous that people began to date things by it, like B.C. and A.D. but stinkier. Chaucer and Shakespeare both were known to blow up a pair of pantaloons with odorous winds now and then for comic effect. Benjamin Franklin wrote a satirical letter to The Royal Academy of Farting in which he proposes a society be formed to study the poot. In the 19th century, a man by the name of Le Petomane, traveled Europe as the world’s first “Fartiste”, entertaining audiences with music and tricks he literally pulled out of his ass. Finally, who can forget the great Mel Brooke’s “bean scene” from Blazing Saddles, possibly the greatest and longest fart joke ever.

Judge these things as low brow and you are looking down your nose at some of the greatest art our civilization has created. Perhaps Freud was right, and men are stuck in some primitive mental state in which we are obsessed with our wieners and asses. (Freud, incidentally was a big fan of Le Petomane.) Either way, even if Tiger did let one rip, we should remember that to fart is human, to crap your pants is bad.

Tiger Woods Farts Video A Practical Joke [Examiner]
Flatulence Humor [Absolute Astonomy]