Florida's motley assortment of serial killers, narcotraffickers and financial schemers caught a very big break last week when Tiger Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade near his home.

This banal incident is already priority No. 1 for the Florida Highway Patrol, which has better things to do than investigate real crimes involving nameless nobodies.

Let's face it -- another body dumped along the I-95 corridor is par for the course. Getting the world's greatest golfer to sweat through an embarrassing interview is the kind of birdie-in-the-hand that doesn't come around every day.

Sure, Tiger Woods has unbelievable amounts of wealth and fame, but he's not above the law. When the best player the game ever produced declined for a third time to be interviewed by the highway patrol, the incompetent nanny state that is Florida went bananas. Now the investigators have applied for a search warrant to gather evidence.

Though Tiger Woods has accepted full responsibility for running down a fire hydrant and a neighbor's tree, that doesn't mean he's satisfied the prurient interests of the cops or the public.

Because there are no other crimes in the state worth solving at the moment, the Florida Highway Patrol wants a peek at the golfer's hospital records to determine whether his injuries were caused by a one-car accident or, as is rumored, his wife practicing her short game on his face in response to tabloid reports of his womanizing.

"This is a private matter and I would like to keep it that way," Tiger Woods wrote on his Web site. "Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible."

Immediately, there was braying about the unfairness of someone with Tiger's wealth and fame expecting the same right to privacy the rest of us take for granted.

It certainly was unsportsmanlike of him to invoke his right as an American to escape the vagaries of the 24-hour news cycle without considering the rest of us. We, his "adoring" public, demand to be titillated -- preferably at his expense.

Can a culture as obsessed with celebrity as our own afford to indulge a "reckless" billionaire's sense of privacy and entitlement? Having made $99.7 million in winnings and endorsements in 2009 alone, isn't it asking too much to expect ordinary shmoes like us to look the other way when a dysfunctional family drama is in the offing?

The highway patrol obviously believes that Tiger Woods -- the world's first billion-dollar athlete -- is either guilty of a DUI or hiding the fact that he is a victim of domestic violence.

The narrative that seems to be grabbing hold of the national imagination involves an enraged Elin Nordegren, Tiger's Swedish-born wife, taking things a step further than Elizabeth Edwards or Ginny Sanford did when dealing with a husband "hiking on the Appalachian trail."

The Florida Highway Patrol is suspicious of Ms. Nordegren because she told them one story and the local cops another. She claims to have smashed the back window of the Escalade with a golf club to extract her unconscious husband after hearing the crash. When the ambulance arrived, she was "hovering" over the golfer, who was bleeding from the mouth.

Playing devil's advocate for a second, how likely is it that Tiger Woods needs protection from his wife? Will he need to be relocated to a shelter once the "truth" is uncovered?

If the whole scenario is true, this is an example of a perverse logic that pretends that an act of anger and frustration by an angry wife rises to the level of spousal abuse. Of course wife-on-husband spousal abuse exists, but this is a waste of Florida's diminishing resources. Even if she clobbered Tiger with a putter in a moment of frustration, Elin Nordegren Woods is not O.J. Simpson.

Why can't a married couple have even an embarrassing public dispute without the cops looking for probable cause to put one of them away?

If the mainstream media weren't hell-bent on beating the National Enquirer at its own game, the story would have receded after an initial flurry of interest.

Over the weekend, pictures of Tiger Woods' alleged mistress meeting with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred fueled a new round of speculation. Lord knows that if Ms. Allred is involved, then Nancy Grace, Larry King and the other horses of the Apocalypse can't be that far behind.

Tony's Take on Comix by Tony Norman is featured exclusively in the Opinion section on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.