Video: Randy Travis Gets Cuffed

Like the chasm that falls between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, fans of seeing celebrities getting in trouble invariably have to wait a week or so between when a drunk famous person gets cuffed and when the video of said arrest hits the Internets. So it is today for those captivated by the arrest of country superstar Randy Travis, pinched last week in Sanger, Texas for public drunkenness. In his truck. In a Baptist church parking lot. After a fight with his fiancee. After the Super Bowl. (He claimed he was all hopped up on goofballs due to excessive Super-Bowl celebration.) 

All of which begs the question: Was the unfailingly polite Travis (Officer: “Have you had anything to drink today, sir?” Travis: “Yes, sir, I have. But I’m not driving, as you can see.”) really just drunk in his truck in a church parking lot—or was he simply doing research for The Perfect Country-and-Western Song? Let’s compare to the previous title-holder, the David Allen Coe classic “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” The writer of Coe's hit, Steve Goodman, transformed his song into The Perfect Country-and-Western Song by adding a final verse of classic country-and-western tropes: “mama, trains, trucks, prison and getting drunk.” By that count, Travis (“fiancee, church, trucks, prison and getting drunk”) is pretty close—and the inclusion of the Super Bowl may just push his potential ballad right over the top. The only scorpion in the boot, in terms of country-and-western verite, is that the cops found an open bottle of wine in Travis’ vehicle; and, as everyone knows, real cowboys don’t drink pinot.