Tiger Woods's comment that he played like a "spaz"— a derisive word derived from the condition of being "spastic"—after collapsing in the final round of the Masters tournament created a furor in the UK; but just a yawn, and even some cover-ups, stateside. Since the story brings together two of Gelf's favorite recurring themes—international perspectives on current events, and the media's treatment of potentially profane or offensive language—we're compelled to take a closer look.

In the UK, "spaz" is apparently much worse than stateside. "Woods sure to regret remark," the Scotsman headlined its report. Paralympian Dame Tanni Grey Thompson told the BBC, "I don't think he meant to be that offensive but it's something nobody in his position should be saying." And the Independent's James Lawton wrote, "Some interpreted this as a grievous insult to handicapped people all over the world." (Woods has since apologized, according to the Scotsman.)

But in the US, many golf writers either blithely reprinted the comment without editorializing, or sanitized it. On ESPN.com, Bob Harig ran the quote, with the spelling "spazz." In the Middletown Press, Jim Hawkins quoted Tiger saying, "That was the best I've hit it in years. But once I got to the greens I was a 'spaz.' "

As the UK's Daily Telegraph pointed out, other US newspapers changed the quote, giving the world's best golfer the benefit of the doubt in a manner that would make Ed Bradley proud. The Los Angeles Times substituted the word "wreck" in brackets. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe all ran excerpts from the quote without the word "spaz."

"Spaz" has shown up at other times in the US press, without acknowledgment of its potential to offend: An article in the Chicago Sun-Times (which couldn't handle Mick Jagger's Super Bowl lyrics, and whose rival paper once freaked out over the publication of a story about the word "cunt") about a prom-themed improv show that mentions "high school spaz"; a Dallas Morning News columnist who tells men, "don't think I don't know we ladies can spaz at warp speed"; and the word shows up repeatedly in an Anchorage Daily News article about the musician "Spaztic-X." And then there's Spatializer Audio Laboratories Inc., whose over-the-counter stock symbol is SPAZ. Perhaps this episode can net Tiger an audio-system sponsorship.