MBS ain’t no fool. He knows that most people in the West will be placated by bread and circuses. There may be a bit of whining about the human rights abuses and so forth, but if they’re culturally popular I don’t think it’ll matter.
The Saudis are acting in their own best interest. I wish we would do the same.
I truly do not understand why Saudis are so vilified. Are they worse than Iran, North Korea parts of Africa or China? I mean really, the horror of demeaning women? What is more demeaning to women that the Mulvaney guy/girl as a cultural hero? Jailing dissidents? Go interview the US citizens in jail for Jan 6 demonstrations. Killing journalists? Kashoggi wrote an occasional column for the Post, I believe. He was a political operative who it’s convenient to call a journalist now that he is dead. Let’s not make him Mother Theresa please.
Maybe there are two things to consider from this article.
One, maybe the Saudis are buying into sports for the same reason rich people in the US do. Because it’s fun. It could be that simple.
Two, maybe the rest of the world is tired of cultural judgement from an elite group of people in the US and the West who think it is OK to castrate children, who arbitrarily let males who self describe as women into women’s safe spaces (rest rooms, prisons, locker rooms) to rape and molest, who think that developing nations should remain poor by worshiping at the altar of some bizarre eco climate god and who gleefully pushed destructive COVID mitigation policies that killed more than the disease on their own populations.
Imperialism when also building railroads and schools was defendable. Cultural imperialism with the ideas being suggested now is insane. Maybe it would be better to stop judging others and take a good hard look at what the West is becoming and heal ourselves.
I think the conclusion of the article - that Saudia Arabia is buying their way into all of these sporting activities as well as investing massively in their country in other ways because they fell behind UAE and Qatar - is probably correct. "Sportswashing" was and is too simple of a reason. And it also doesn't work. Just read the comment section in The Athletic anytime there is an article about Saudi Arabia in sports: the "It's sportswashing!" drones come out in full force.
My biggest issue with this article is that it was sloppily written. For one, it's not the "PGA," it's the "PGA Tour." There is a huge difference. The PGA is the Professional Golfers Association, which runs the Ryder Cup and is not affiliated with the PGA Tour. This is basic stuff for a journalist. The second was that the way the article was written implied that Rory McIlroy took the LIV Golf money ("Rory McIlroy, who initially turned down a huge LIV offer before bowing to the inevitable."). In fact, he did not. He is the most outspoken critic of LIV. Yes, he acknowledged the money the Saudis were throwing at golf and that it was inevitable some people would chase the money. But he was not one of them.
Human rights is a gauzy concept to be cast aside whenever in conflict with money. Biden is willing to negotiate away the human rights of Uighurs in China in exchange for an easily broken promise to stop trying to poison all of America with fentanyl. Of course, the Bidens are willing to do anything for money, so perhaps a minor thing like torture, organ harvesting and slave labor really doesn’t matter.
The only surprising thing is that the Saudis didn’t accommodate like-minded Biden when he went hat in hand and embarrassed himself on the world stage. Just another Wednesday.
It seems to be so utterly incomprehensible to Americans that the world is moving ahead without us. See, for example, BRICS, the thriving Russian economy, the increasing indifference to US pressure or opinion. Why should Saudis care what we, an increasing irrelevant nation in economic decline and political sclerosis, think of them? Every celeb or mogul with money to burn buys a sports team. In this case, a pipe is just a pipe.
A culture that "disembowels Washington Post columnists" can't be all bad. Now if they could only expand their mandate to the NY Times and WSJ "news" page jokers, they'd be doing the entire world a service.
This was a slightly interesting if leftward biased report that probably doesn't merit being featured as a Saturday morning offering. Especially when the President of the United States is increasingly being seen as a liar, a crook and likely a traitor. And when rank and file Democrats and their house organs persist in claiming otherwise, making us the laughingstock of the world. Including places such as Saudi Arabia.
In the arena of foreign policy, I guess I am a realist. We need cheap oil as it's the engine that runs our economy. I am not a leftist who sucks my thumb worrying about climate change ( we will adapt to handle it), that countries don't all have LBGTQ rights ( some actually follow religious beliefs), and finally, never lost a second of sleep by the death of Jamal Khashoggi.
Our world is filled with self-interest; if others share our values, great. When I share values, it is the 19th and 20th Century American values, not those shared by the Woke and secularists, but I admire what MBS is trying to do. The failure to think that you can turn a society around instantly to be a modern Western country was tested and failed miserably; cases #1 and #2 are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately, we want stability, benefit, and nothing that can threaten us.
China needs oil and is looking to take the world off the dollar. MBS is a person who is doing what is best for him. Our goal should keep him in our orbit and not Chinese is one we should work hard to make sure happens. Yes, we won't be perfect in our woke secular morality, but the Iraq war taught me a valuable lesson. Bush's vision of the world needed to be revised and corrected. The world is the way it is, and no finger-wagging or moral speeches will change it.
So to the author, you can go back to sucking your thumb and worrying about Sportswashing; I will enjoy sports and hope our foreign policy ensures MBS and the Saudis are our friends. In the end, that is what is best for American self-interest.
Thanks for this excellent piece. Grotesque is indeed an excellent word to describe all this. I'm Canadian and not exactly a sports fan (Montreal Canadians/Habs forever nothing else) but have lived in England and Brazil for past 15 years, Football/Soccer countries where it's more than a religion. I'm rather fascinated by the passion as well as how the leagues operate (in England, it's all money, a billionaire buys a team and and all the best players in Europe, in Brazil, it's not like this and more "pure" as I like to think). Just a couple of weeks ago something happened that has left me so uninspired and put off by sports and the timing of this article is perfect: a Rio team that had been doing terribly for many years has been leading the league this year and the fans are in utter ecstasy. The coach, from Portugal, got a call from Christiano Ronaldo asking him to join him and his team in SA last month...in the middle of the season, the team doing spectacularly...of course, the coach upped sticks and left. Nobody seems to truly care about anything but money, more than winning! I am fascinated by the passion and dedication of football fans here and sometimes feel it's a commentary on the human condition but then....I realize it's just about money and lose any grain of hope I had. Sorry for the rant!
Keeping Canadian oil in the ground through funding of naive protestors has certainly helped the Saudis keep the good times rolling and the billions accumulating.
Worht a line or two in a piece about Arab petrostate autocracies and sportswashing: The UAE isn't exactly an open society. Isn't "Emirates" plastered all over the Arsenal soccer club stadium and jerseys performing the same 'sportswashing' function? [Does it really matter that technically it's their state airline logo, rather than the national coat of arms?] Brits don't think twice about it, either. Totally normalized.
“It also suggests that they are terribly worried about what we in the West think about their culture and governments.”
Too bad the CCP could care less what the rest of the world thinks of them, they’ve been sport washing their ongoing human rights atrocities with their Olympic Games hosting for years. Bari - how about a piece on this wonderful nation and their 100 year mission.
America’s working class has been forced to send them trillions? through energy policy. This is their way of giving back to the world. Lol. That and sports is the great distraction isn’t it? Takes people mind off their murdering and oppression.
As a friend of The Watson Family, a reminder that their son Joshua, USNA '19 was killed by a Saudi Flight Student at NAS-Pensacola in December 2019. Sacred ground to the training of Naval, Marine, and Coast Guard Aviators, our foreign "allies" also are sponsored by their government to train at NAS-Pensacola. Two other Sailors were killed in the same incident -https://usnamemorialhall.org/index.php/JOSHUA_K._WATSON,_ENS,_USN
I always love these type of articles that conveniently forget (or ignore) that the USA drone strikes individuals on foreign soil with high collateral damage, locks up foreign individuals for decades without charges, and engages in countless military adventures that results in tremendous civilian deaths. Of course, we think it's okay because it's all "legal". Guess what amigo, the King of Saudi Arabia sets the law so whatever he decides is legal. What this article really highlights is much of America HATES diversity. Diversity to them is a group of people with different skin color that all think the same. True diversity is much more than that and includes thoughts and practices. With modern day missionary zeal, America is trying its best to make the world accept libeal values and I suspect in the future the world will bemoan the loss of true diversity.
While I’m willing to call it sportswashing, plain and simple, it’s absurd to call out golf, F1, and soccer as the only guilty parties. Half of NBA revenue comes from China.
MBS ain’t no fool. He knows that most people in the West will be placated by bread and circuses. There may be a bit of whining about the human rights abuses and so forth, but if they’re culturally popular I don’t think it’ll matter.
The Saudis are acting in their own best interest. I wish we would do the same.
And, of course, the elephant in the room: Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers in the September 11 attacks were Saudi. Nice folks.
I truly do not understand why Saudis are so vilified. Are they worse than Iran, North Korea parts of Africa or China? I mean really, the horror of demeaning women? What is more demeaning to women that the Mulvaney guy/girl as a cultural hero? Jailing dissidents? Go interview the US citizens in jail for Jan 6 demonstrations. Killing journalists? Kashoggi wrote an occasional column for the Post, I believe. He was a political operative who it’s convenient to call a journalist now that he is dead. Let’s not make him Mother Theresa please.
Maybe there are two things to consider from this article.
One, maybe the Saudis are buying into sports for the same reason rich people in the US do. Because it’s fun. It could be that simple.
Two, maybe the rest of the world is tired of cultural judgement from an elite group of people in the US and the West who think it is OK to castrate children, who arbitrarily let males who self describe as women into women’s safe spaces (rest rooms, prisons, locker rooms) to rape and molest, who think that developing nations should remain poor by worshiping at the altar of some bizarre eco climate god and who gleefully pushed destructive COVID mitigation policies that killed more than the disease on their own populations.
Imperialism when also building railroads and schools was defendable. Cultural imperialism with the ideas being suggested now is insane. Maybe it would be better to stop judging others and take a good hard look at what the West is becoming and heal ourselves.
I think the conclusion of the article - that Saudia Arabia is buying their way into all of these sporting activities as well as investing massively in their country in other ways because they fell behind UAE and Qatar - is probably correct. "Sportswashing" was and is too simple of a reason. And it also doesn't work. Just read the comment section in The Athletic anytime there is an article about Saudi Arabia in sports: the "It's sportswashing!" drones come out in full force.
My biggest issue with this article is that it was sloppily written. For one, it's not the "PGA," it's the "PGA Tour." There is a huge difference. The PGA is the Professional Golfers Association, which runs the Ryder Cup and is not affiliated with the PGA Tour. This is basic stuff for a journalist. The second was that the way the article was written implied that Rory McIlroy took the LIV Golf money ("Rory McIlroy, who initially turned down a huge LIV offer before bowing to the inevitable."). In fact, he did not. He is the most outspoken critic of LIV. Yes, he acknowledged the money the Saudis were throwing at golf and that it was inevitable some people would chase the money. But he was not one of them.
In any case, please do research better next time.
Human rights is a gauzy concept to be cast aside whenever in conflict with money. Biden is willing to negotiate away the human rights of Uighurs in China in exchange for an easily broken promise to stop trying to poison all of America with fentanyl. Of course, the Bidens are willing to do anything for money, so perhaps a minor thing like torture, organ harvesting and slave labor really doesn’t matter.
The only surprising thing is that the Saudis didn’t accommodate like-minded Biden when he went hat in hand and embarrassed himself on the world stage. Just another Wednesday.
It seems to be so utterly incomprehensible to Americans that the world is moving ahead without us. See, for example, BRICS, the thriving Russian economy, the increasing indifference to US pressure or opinion. Why should Saudis care what we, an increasing irrelevant nation in economic decline and political sclerosis, think of them? Every celeb or mogul with money to burn buys a sports team. In this case, a pipe is just a pipe.
A culture that "disembowels Washington Post columnists" can't be all bad. Now if they could only expand their mandate to the NY Times and WSJ "news" page jokers, they'd be doing the entire world a service.
This was a slightly interesting if leftward biased report that probably doesn't merit being featured as a Saturday morning offering. Especially when the President of the United States is increasingly being seen as a liar, a crook and likely a traitor. And when rank and file Democrats and their house organs persist in claiming otherwise, making us the laughingstock of the world. Including places such as Saudi Arabia.
In the arena of foreign policy, I guess I am a realist. We need cheap oil as it's the engine that runs our economy. I am not a leftist who sucks my thumb worrying about climate change ( we will adapt to handle it), that countries don't all have LBGTQ rights ( some actually follow religious beliefs), and finally, never lost a second of sleep by the death of Jamal Khashoggi.
Our world is filled with self-interest; if others share our values, great. When I share values, it is the 19th and 20th Century American values, not those shared by the Woke and secularists, but I admire what MBS is trying to do. The failure to think that you can turn a society around instantly to be a modern Western country was tested and failed miserably; cases #1 and #2 are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately, we want stability, benefit, and nothing that can threaten us.
China needs oil and is looking to take the world off the dollar. MBS is a person who is doing what is best for him. Our goal should keep him in our orbit and not Chinese is one we should work hard to make sure happens. Yes, we won't be perfect in our woke secular morality, but the Iraq war taught me a valuable lesson. Bush's vision of the world needed to be revised and corrected. The world is the way it is, and no finger-wagging or moral speeches will change it.
So to the author, you can go back to sucking your thumb and worrying about Sportswashing; I will enjoy sports and hope our foreign policy ensures MBS and the Saudis are our friends. In the end, that is what is best for American self-interest.
Thanks for this excellent piece. Grotesque is indeed an excellent word to describe all this. I'm Canadian and not exactly a sports fan (Montreal Canadians/Habs forever nothing else) but have lived in England and Brazil for past 15 years, Football/Soccer countries where it's more than a religion. I'm rather fascinated by the passion as well as how the leagues operate (in England, it's all money, a billionaire buys a team and and all the best players in Europe, in Brazil, it's not like this and more "pure" as I like to think). Just a couple of weeks ago something happened that has left me so uninspired and put off by sports and the timing of this article is perfect: a Rio team that had been doing terribly for many years has been leading the league this year and the fans are in utter ecstasy. The coach, from Portugal, got a call from Christiano Ronaldo asking him to join him and his team in SA last month...in the middle of the season, the team doing spectacularly...of course, the coach upped sticks and left. Nobody seems to truly care about anything but money, more than winning! I am fascinated by the passion and dedication of football fans here and sometimes feel it's a commentary on the human condition but then....I realize it's just about money and lose any grain of hope I had. Sorry for the rant!
Keeping Canadian oil in the ground through funding of naive protestors has certainly helped the Saudis keep the good times rolling and the billions accumulating.
Worht a line or two in a piece about Arab petrostate autocracies and sportswashing: The UAE isn't exactly an open society. Isn't "Emirates" plastered all over the Arsenal soccer club stadium and jerseys performing the same 'sportswashing' function? [Does it really matter that technically it's their state airline logo, rather than the national coat of arms?] Brits don't think twice about it, either. Totally normalized.
“It also suggests that they are terribly worried about what we in the West think about their culture and governments.”
Too bad the CCP could care less what the rest of the world thinks of them, they’ve been sport washing their ongoing human rights atrocities with their Olympic Games hosting for years. Bari - how about a piece on this wonderful nation and their 100 year mission.
America’s working class has been forced to send them trillions? through energy policy. This is their way of giving back to the world. Lol. That and sports is the great distraction isn’t it? Takes people mind off their murdering and oppression.
As a friend of The Watson Family, a reminder that their son Joshua, USNA '19 was killed by a Saudi Flight Student at NAS-Pensacola in December 2019. Sacred ground to the training of Naval, Marine, and Coast Guard Aviators, our foreign "allies" also are sponsored by their government to train at NAS-Pensacola. Two other Sailors were killed in the same incident -https://usnamemorialhall.org/index.php/JOSHUA_K._WATSON,_ENS,_USN
#FlyNavy
I always love these type of articles that conveniently forget (or ignore) that the USA drone strikes individuals on foreign soil with high collateral damage, locks up foreign individuals for decades without charges, and engages in countless military adventures that results in tremendous civilian deaths. Of course, we think it's okay because it's all "legal". Guess what amigo, the King of Saudi Arabia sets the law so whatever he decides is legal. What this article really highlights is much of America HATES diversity. Diversity to them is a group of people with different skin color that all think the same. True diversity is much more than that and includes thoughts and practices. With modern day missionary zeal, America is trying its best to make the world accept libeal values and I suspect in the future the world will bemoan the loss of true diversity.
While I’m willing to call it sportswashing, plain and simple, it’s absurd to call out golf, F1, and soccer as the only guilty parties. Half of NBA revenue comes from China.