Unfortunate update

Sometimes when times are tough (and they've certainly been that lately), it can become excessively easy to jump on a supposedly happy story simply because they seem so rare. Such is the case of Ted Williams, the "golden voice" who I wrote about here last week and who immediately became a national sensation. Turns out there was a lot more there than initially met the eye, and I'm definitely guilty of having jumped to the "happy story" conclusion.

Ted Williams, the homeless "golden voice" internet sensation, voluntarily checked into substance abuse rehab for his alcohol and drug dependency after admitting on a television show that he was still drinking, a spokeswoman for "The Dr. Phil Show" said Wednesday.

Williams, 53, has been on a whirlwind spiral of publicity since a Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reporter videotaped him panhandling on a roadside. The video quickly went viral on the internet, and he was offered several announcing jobs, including a contract with Kraft Foods.

He said in several broadcast interviews in the past week he has been sober for the past two years after years of addiction, a problem that separated him from his family and left him homeless for years...

Dr. Howard Samuels, the CEO of The Hills Treatment Center in Los Angeles, said he was not surprised to learn Williams was still drinking, given that the experienced "such an extreme from having nothing to having money and fame in such a short period of time."

"The hardest thing for an alcoholic is to have success," Samuels said. "Because the alcoholic, on a very deep level, has a very difficult time with success."

There were early warning signs in the Williams story, including news that he had in fact abandoned his wife and children and maybe wasn't the best guy to be glorifying on a national stage. He was then briefly arrested and questioned with regard to an altercation with his daughter in a hotel lobby, and now this.

There's so much to this story that it's a little hard to know where to begin analyzing it--the power of YouTube, the perils of instant fame, the all-encompassing 24-hour news cycle that pounces on celebrity and sucks it for all it's worth (don't forget to tune in to Dr. Phil for the follow-up with Ted's wife and daughters today!)--and behind it all, the public's insatiable appetite for entertainment at the expense of others.

As desperate as we all may have been for a happy story in these difficult times, we are often equally quick to jump on the man on his way down and marvel at the sordid and salacious details of his scandalous fall from momentary grace. This potentially happy story has apparently turned tragic, and it's hard to know exactly whom to blame. I am certainly not immune from criticism, nor is the man himself. It's just sad, plain and simple.

[CNN]