Many of you know this. If you don't, you should know by now. But Saudi Arabia has been both this country's ally and a very, very sketchy actor on the world stage. There is indisputable evidence that henchmen hired by someone in the Saudi ruling family beat, killed and dismembered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. The country executed 81 people on the same day in March; I am a proponent of the death penalty, but even I'm thinking, "Whoa." Finally, there are connections between the ruling family and many of the terrorists who carried out 9/11.
It is that family that's bankrolling this LIV Tour. And among many other differences between it and the PGA, the money is the big thing. Not only are the pots for the eight tournaments this year each going to be bigger than any tourney on the PGA, many of the big names have signed guaranteed contracts. Apparently Lefty and DJ have signing bonuses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
All well and good ... until you begin to grasp the bigger picture. This is "sportswashing," the idea that oligarchs and countries can use sports to paint them in a more positive light despite its human rights violations. Moreover, it is LIV's mission to poach the PGA's best players; without them, the PGA will cease to exist. Ostensibly the LIV provides competition with the PGA. I believe its secret mission is to destroy the PGA. I can't see two competing top-money global golf tournaments surviving in perpetuity.
It's that backdrop -- even though the sportswashing is more important on a moral level than the survival of the PGA -- that served as a talking point on this show on Sirius XM's PGA Tour Radio called "Gravy And The Sleaze." That's a name for a morning zoo show on a shock rock terrestrial station, not on a channel dedicated to the staid, stately world of golf. But after hearing these two dumbass's takes on this, turns out it's as intelligent as a morning zoo.
They're totally pro-LIV. The talked about how competition is good, even though the upstart "competitor" has upwards of $2 billion to sink into this project. More than that, though, these two guys (and I can't tell these two dipshits apart) pulled out that argument many MAGAts do: Whataboutism. Many callers actually supported -- if not favored -- LIV by saying that many PGA Tour players play in China, another country with a horrible human rights record. Both Sleaze and Gravy opened up their gobs and said, "Yeah! That's right!" There was one caller who pointed out that golf events in China aren't backstopped by the Chinese government while the LIV Tour is (a good point, although the degrees of separation between the tours' backers and their respective governments isn't that different), and either Gravy or the Sleaze said something about getting money from the Chinese tour, so that's not different at all, whatever the hell that means. And then I got so angered by their greed that I had to change the channel.
Whataboutism is just an excuse money whores use to whore themselves for money. Scratch deep enough, everyone's a hypocrite. And there should be some re-examination of Americans' dalliance with China and by extension the Chinese government -- although it practically is harder to extricate all ties with China because of their ubiquitous presence in manufacturing. I mean, how many clothes do you wear that say "Made In Saudi Arabia?"
My point is that just because other people are doing something that they shouldn't be doing doesn't give you permission to do something you shouldn't be doing. For all those who say, "Does it really matter where you get your money from?" I want them to read this story detailing the death and dismemberment of Khashoggi and ask me -- and themselves -- if they're really, truly comfortable taking blood money from the Saudi family that's funding the LIV Tour. If you have any morals, you don't.
The idea that the entire world is a free-for-all and so you're just trying to get your paper is just a rationalization not to do the right thing. Many golfers who've signed on the dotted line for LIV signed with the blood of people the ruling Saudis had killed simply because they don't like them. And The Sleaze and Gravy both are on their knees and downing bucketfuls of mouthwash so they can fellate the Saudis and get that same blood money. Those two talking heads probably think the January 6 insurrection was legitimate political discourse.
There are way too many people who think like these two goddamn bozos. And so I am hoping that climate change comes quick and incinerates this entire world and the human race, because we clearly have shown we don't deserve to live.
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