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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Sportswashing Open Thread: Saudi Princes Just Bought (Off) the PGA

Late Night Sportswashing Open Thread: Saudi Princes Just Bought (Off) the PGA

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For those of us who cover sports, even on a limited basis, it was something only a bit short of Jesus In A Tomato miracle to see the PGA Tour actually taking a moral stand against billionaires. When Saudi Arabia attempted to sportswash its dismal reputation by launching the LIV professional golf tour, fueled by over-the-hill dingbats like Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman, and there was an outcry by all decent people including the families of 9/11 victims, the PGA Tour stood up and declined to get Jamal Khashoggi’s blood on its hands. It knuckled the current pros who went over to the Bonesaw Tour. And it sued the LIV Tour, which countersued. But the idea that the PGA Tour would find a group of rich guys with whom it didn’t want to do business was a Black Swan event of gigantic proportions.

You just knew it wouldn’t last…


Sports Greenwashing Open Thread: Saudi Princes Just Bought (Off) the PGA

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  2. 2.

    JWR

    I’m just now catching up on the day’s threads, and boy, did I pick the wrong day to nap! Holy Moley, Batman!

  3. 3.

    Brachiator

    Not a huge golf fan, but this seems odd for a sport that likes to revel in history and tradition.

  8. 8.

    Steve in the ATL

    As part of the merger, the PGA will control holes 1-8 and 12-18.

    The Saudis do 9-11.

    That is genius!

  10. 10.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Speaking of pieces of shit, TFG is really off the rails and now he’s calling Mr. Smith “salacious”…lol!

  15. 15.

    JWR

    OMG! If you haven’t watched this Pence clip, I guess you’re today’s lucky duck. (No really, go watch it. The hypocritical flip-flop is amazing!)

    “Sir, I just want to clarify what you’re saying is if they believe he committed a crime, they should not go forward with an indictment? You just talked before about committing to the rule of law.” pic.twitter.com/8tk5XBZOxe
    — Acyn (@Acyn) June 8, 2023

  16. 16.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    The Nazi’s could have kept the U.S. from entering WWII by simply sponsoring a golf tournament

  18. 18.

    gene108

    @JWR:

    Pence is so pathetic. TFG’s never going to forgive you for betraying him on J6. His followers wanted to hang you. They built gallows.

  19. 19.

    sab

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: And that would have been so much better for the world?!

    I really don’t think golf matters much. Bores me. But I am biased. Can my husband now stop watching golf all day all through every weekend? I like golf on tv but as background. I play badly so following it seriously is stressful.

    I do kind of feel for those golfers who took a moral stance and didn’t take the huge bucks and then got completely undercut by Jay Monaghan. What was he thinking? His product is those golfers and he just chopped them off at the knee.

    I will never understand rich people. They are not smarter than the rest of us. They are just more sociopathic than the rest of us.

  21. 21.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    I will never understand rich people. They are not smarter than the rest of us. They are just more sociopathic than the rest of us.

    Sounds like you understand most of them

    Quite well in fact.

  23. 23.

    sab

    @Baud: Lol. My little neighborhood needs to convert its unused single tennis court into a pickleball court. Lived here 20 years and I have yet to see a single tennis game. The basketball court never stops, but the tennis court, meh.

  24. 24.

    gene108

    @gene108:

    I wish the media would always ask Pence, who won the 2020 presidential election? Did you and Donald Trump lose to President Biden and Vice President Harris?

    I just want to see the lies he tells to avoid answering it. I wish I could lie as easily as Pence.

  25. 25.

    sab

    @Ruckus: I sorta do understand them. In my mis-spent youth my parents made me be a debutante in my godforsaken small midwestern city. My escort at the charity ball was a lovely hilarious not yet out gay guy. My best friend at that point in our lives. He died of AIDS ten years later

    ETA  Even (or especially) life in the boondocks is complicated.

  26. 26.

    JWR

    Things got pretty hot yesterday afternoon in BillinGlendale’s back yard.

    Outrage as anti-LGBTQ+ protest at California school board turns violent

    Democratic politicians across California condemned a volatile anti-gay protest outside a suburban Los Angeles school board meeting on Tuesday, as the school board heard public comment on whether to officially designate June as LGBTQ+ Pride month.

    Footage from a local television station showed crowds of people shoving, kicking and throwing punches outside a school district building in Glendale, California.

    Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman who represents Glendale, shared video of the melee, condemning the “continued acts of violence and hate towards our LGBTQ community” as “horrific”.

    “We will not apologize for celebrating the strength and the diversity of our LGBTQ community,” he wrote on Twitter.

  28. 28.

    BellyCat

    @JWR: To be permitted airtime for debates on Fox, candidates must agree to support the nominee. So Pence flips.

  29. 29.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Golfers are the greediest and most immoral athletes in the world. Golf is a ridiculous sport that is monstrously damaging to the world ecologically. They deserve each other.

  31. 31.

    Geo Wilcox

    The dumbest thing the PGA did was to sue people with endless stacks of money. If the PGA had just ignored the whole LIV thing, it would have died away eventually leaving th PGA with the moral high ground. But noooooooo, they poked a huge bear with a big sick. FAFO idiots.

  33. 33.

    oatler

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    I said something like that about football and got tag-teamed here. As a fan of G&O’s “Sports Go Sports” I think either all sports are silly or none of them are.

  36. 36.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @oatler: Oh sure. As usual, things are complicated, especially the things people decide to invest their time and money into. Still, when I see the images of NY looking like a scene from The Martian and I think about all the real estate golf takes up and the water used to maintain it, I wish humanity would find other means to entertain ourselves that weren’t so self-destructive.

  37. 37.

    Geminid

    @Baud: There could be geopolitical undercurrents here. Reports are that many of the Glendale protesters against the Pride Month were Armenian Ameriricans. And Turkiye has just banned Only Fans. “Wheels within wheels.”

  39. 39.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Geminid:

    Reports are that many of the Glendale protesters against the Pride Month were Armenian Ameriricans.

    Where have they been for the last 10 years when LGBTQ+ acceptance went mainstream? Why now all of a sudden?

  43. 43.

    oatler

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    Golf on TV is good-looking because the players are thin and the landscaping is gorgeous, though I agree golf and landscaping are sucking the water tables dry. Kind of an issue in AZ here.

  45. 45.

    JWR

    @Baud: Whatever it is, (prurient interests aside, natch), these “grassroots” events are going on all over SoCal this week, and they’re getting big coverage on the local news.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    Bloomberg Law
    @BLaw
    NEW: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas received a 90-day extension for his 2022 financial disclosure report, according to the administrative office for the federal judiciary.

    Bloomberg Law
    @BLaw
    ·17h
    As he has in the past, Justice Samuel Alito also received an extension, according to the administrative office for the federal judiciary.
    The other justices filed their disclosure reports.

    The two furthest Right and most scolding, complaining and unforgiving justices just blow past deadlines, because rules are for little people.

  47. 47.

    Kay

    @JWR:

    Are they reporting that the violence is being ginned up by members of the Proud Boys, or that the same “parent protestors” show up at each event? Because surely that should be in the story. There’s video- all they have to do is watch it.

  48. 48.

    Mousebumples

    @Kay: The two furthest Right and most scolding, complaining and unforgiving justices just blow past deadlines, because rules are for little people.

    I’d like to believe Thomas, at least, is actually going to report things, after the outcry, but lololol. I wouldn’t count on it.

  49. 49.

    Tony Jay

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:

    The Undead are making their move, sheeple! Get a grip on some wood, touch up your local pastor for a splash of his blessed liquid, and trust no one who’s out of doors in a bedgown, especially not hot, hippie chicks, they’re the absolute worst.

    And whatever you do, ignore that scratching at your window, it might be Rick Scott.

  50. 50.

    TS

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Where have they been for the last 10 years when LGBTQ+ acceptance went mainstream? Why now all of a sudden?

    Don’t have abortion as their launch pad into peoples bodies anymore so looking for another group to attack. Takes peoples minds away from what really makes their lives miserable.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Mousebumples:

    I genuinely do not understand why they can’t meet these deadlines. If they’re too lazy or too busy or out on yachts or whatever they could hire someone. You can read the form they fill out at the link- this isn’t difficult. They’re just deliberately thumbing their nose at deadlines and rules and they are judges. Thomas regularly orders that people be executed because their lawyers missed a deadline- he orders the client be killed immediately. Missed deadline.

  53. 53.

    Geminid

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There were just a few score protesters at most. There is a movement generally to protest Pride events and my guess is that these protesters were influenced by it, if not directly organized by outsiders.

    I saw pictures and video of the melee on Twitter, and that’s where I saw  protesters identified as Armenian Americans. So this is not a certain identification. Now I am curious though, and will try to find out more through local media. I expect it’s a big story in Glendale.

  54. 54.

    WaterGirl

    @JWR: Wow, I kept thinking he would burst into flames.  I have a question for the 10 people who clapped for that answer – how can  you clap for someone who says we shouldn’t indict the guy who committed a million crimes because he’s a former president, and at the same times says he believe in equal treatment under the law?

  55. 55.

    Almost Retired

    Horrified but not surprised. The PGA lost me 20 years ago, when they reused to accommodate Casey Martin’s disability with a golf cart, arguing that it would alter an essential function of the game. Yeah. OK.
    Is the essential function of the sport the ability to hit a ball into a hole with a stick? Or is it a sport for endurance athletes? IIRC, he eventually won and the sport survived.

  56. 56.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @oatler: Weeeellll…

    Some sports have a greater negative impact on uninvolved people than others. Golf courses take up lots of room, often in areas that need more greenspace available to all (which courses decidedly are not), and out west, lots of water that’s needed for other things.

  57. 57.

    Soprano2

    @JWR: Just wow wow wow………”restore rule of law” and “find a way to not indict TFG for the things he did that were against the law” don’t really fit together. They are all really terrified of him, aren’t they?

  59. 59.

    Yutsano

    If you need any more evidence that golf is destructive and wasteful, look at the number of golf courses around Phoenix, AZ. A place with such a limited water supply doesn’t need that many.

  60. 60.

    artem1s

    Well the Bush Crime Family sold out to the Saud’s decades ago. Why shouldn’t the Richie Rich’s think it’s OK to pal around with terrorists and torturers?

  61. 61.

    opiejeanne

    @Yutsano: Don’t they use gray water for those courses? By law in California, that water, no matter how clean after going through a treatment plant, can not be added to the available drinking water so they use it for landscaping and as a barrier to keep sea water from entering the water table.

  62. 62.

    OverTwistWillie

    Golf has all the usual problems of an analog leisure class activity in the digital age, plus the elitism, sexism, and racism.

    The drop off of in the number of courses and rounds played as Boomers hit the drop zone has been significant. Sales to duffers was a big chunk of the sponsorship dynamics.

    See also: pari-mutuel, where handles went to shit, tracks closed everywhere and Saudi money now props up the top of the line events.

  63. 63.

    KenK

    Out of curiosity; how much Saudi $$$ was in Monaghan’s envelope to get him to sell out?

    As an avid golfer, and human, this pisses me off. It looks like my golf viewing is down to USOpen, The Open, Masters and Ryder Cup – all non-PGA run events.

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