MIAMI — Phil Mickelson did it. He did it with a perfect precision to equal the finest golf shot he ever sculpted. With one comment, he pretty much explained why the sports world is clueless on how to deal with the real-world matter of human rights.
He was speaking of the Saudi Arabian government’s aim to start the Super Golf League, a huge-money new professional tour to rival the PGA Tour. The comments, public this week, are from a forthcoming book by Alan Shipnuck, “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar.”
“They’re scary motherf-----s to get involved with,” Mickelson said, of the Saudi government. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider [their new league]? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. The Saudi money has finally given us that leverage.”
So there it is: Mickelson, with legacy-damaging clarity, speaking for sports at large in the unseemly exchange of principle for pay.
Most other golfers have rebuked the Saudi effort and pledge allegiance to the PGA Tour. Rory McIlroy called Mickelson’s comments “naive, selfish, egotistical and ignorant. Just very surprising and disappointing. Sad.”
Mickelson has caused a firestorm not only because he’s the enormously popular “Lefty,” one of the game’s all-time greats, but because athletes as individuals rarely are willing to put their name on being OK with human rights abuses so long as the money is right.
Normally that is left to sports’ governing bodies and to television networks to play that sordid game with such aplomb — to follow the money with blinders on for everything else.
The fact the Winter Olympics just ended in Beijing, put there despite China’s awful record on human rights, is not the fault of the athletes who wanted to compete after training years for that moment. And it isn’t the fault of fans who wanted to watch. That’s what fans do.
The fault begins with the International Olympic Committee, in 2015, awarding the 2022 Games to China, which, in addition to its human rights record, suffers from pollution and less-than-ideal winters forcing the prevalent use of man-made snow.
Whatever the “Olympic ideal” used to be was smashed to irony at the sight of IOC president Thomas Bach in the company of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, one of the world ‘s most notorious tyrannical authoritarians.
It is under Jinping that more than a million Uighurs are held in internment camps that the Chinese call “educational and vocational centers.” Amid the continuing uncertainty over the situation with Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai since she accused a Chinese official of sexual abuse.
In fairness, it was slim pickings on the choice of Beijing. The only other finalist to host was Almaty, Kazakhstan. And still the vote was close, Beijing winning by 44-40. That tells you there was concern among the IOC on why China would be a controversial host. (Just not enough).
Human Rights Watch reported China’s record has worsened since it hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics. Then again, the same group also reported on the violence and discrimination in Kazakhstan against people who identify as members of the LGBTQ community.
Geez, are there not enough countries in the world who want to host the Olympics and also have a decent human rights record!?
The partner in crime, always, is TV, in this case NBC, willing to pay gigantic rights fees for the honor of televising an Olympiad in Beijing while agreeing to not delve into politics.
Poetically, the Games were the least-watched, lowest-rated in Winter Olympics history, the time change and Beijing as host creating a nightmare for NBC.
It isn’t just the Olympics at fault. American leagues are in financial bed with China, too.
Now FIFA, the global group that runs soccer, with its history of corruption, prepares for its 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Qatar — with its decades of human rights violations against migrant workers, and its dictatorial laws against press freedom, LGBTQ rights and women’s rights.
FIFA adopted the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2016 but had done nothing to demand the Qatari government uphold those rights.
It seems so reasonable to solve sports’ human rights dilemma yet the solution has proved too good to be true:
1. Have honest leadership of groups like the IOC and FIFA, with decision-making not beholden to bribery, and a priority of human of rights records in naming host nations.
2. Have American broadcast entities willing to say no to self-censoring themselves in the televising of major events from places like China and Qatar.
Unfortunately, Phil Mickelson speaks for sports at large when he admits with a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug that human rights atrocities go on ... and then follows the money anyway.
