I Fear for Ted Williams

I found myself waiting anxiously Thursday morning to watch the interview between Matt Lauer and the newly discovered Man With the Golden Voice, Ted Williams.

Several days ago, Williams was holding a sign on a freeway, hoping for the kindness of motoring strangers. That morning he was clearly overwhelmed by his good fortune.

NBC was uncharacteristically tolerant of the man's lack of sophistication and poise by allowing him to speak pretty much without their usual attempts to control the time segments. At one point, he broke down. Earlier he had asserted that he "hadn't even had time to smoke a cigarette." And he told a social worker that NBC apparently made available to him that he thought he might "need a tranquilizer pill or something."

I am as happy as anyone for this guy. A story like this happens much too infrequently for me to get ann0yed by the way the media has swarmed the poor man. But it occurs to me that he could very well be driven out of his tw0-year stretch of sobriety by the stress of it all.

In spite of all our fantasies about good fortune befalling us on any given day and saving us from our respective travails, these things don't always end well. Taking a man who has been living in a homeless camp site for many years and bombarding him with unfamiliar external stimuli is a recipe for disaster.

Think about the way overnight sensations in the entertainment world tend to run amok. Think about the stories one reads about lottery winners who are taken advantage of by predatory relatives and their own lack of fiscal discipline.

I sure hope Dr. Drew or some other behavioral scientist was watching that interview and will intervene before it's too late.

Photo credit: The Daily Beast