US media once again showed its selective concern over human rights abuses this week in covering an important sports story.
A series of gross remarks from golf legend Phil Mickelson about Saudi Arabia and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was met with a flood of hysterical, hypocritical denunciations and biased framing. (Examples: Mediaite, ESPN, NYTimes, WaPo, Yahoo Sports, Golf Channel)
The six-time major winner unleashed an unhinged rant about negotiating with Saudi officials over a proposed breakaway golf league, one that could shake the PGA Tour to its core and potentially spell its end as the world's top circuit.
"They're scary motherf---ers to get involved with," Mickelson said of the Saudi government. "They killed [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 it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates."
Mickelson's comments are appalling, yet he was merely mirroring the worldview of America's business and political elites.
After all, the US government -- a self-proclaimed constitutional republic -- has long looked past Saudi Arabia's disturbing behavior, instead seeing the radical theocratic monarchy as an ally because of its vast oil resources and its mutual hostility toward Iran.
In reality, the cynical weaponization of "human rights" by US sportswriters is merely misdirection for protecting the interests of one of the leagues they cover -- an expression of "America First" through the prism of sports.
Carrying water for the powerful and wealthy comes naturally to most US journalists -- they couldn't be where they are otherwise -- but especially so when their own careers are threatened, as is the case with the prospect of a top American league being eclipsed by an overseas rival.
Mickelson's referencing of Khashoggi in particular struck a nerve with media elites.
Though he was misrepresented in western media as a "dissident," Khashoggi was in fact a longtime advocate for the arch-reactionary Saudi regime. Hailing from a wealthy family with deep ties to the Saudi monarchy, he once served as spokesman to a Saudi intelligence chief who has been identified as a top sponsor of Osama bin Laden and the other Saudi terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Khashoggi himself was also a close friend of bin Laden, providing friendly coverage of the notorious terrorist and other violent extremists during the bloody Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s. At least a few photos exist of Khashoggi proudly posing with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in Afghanistan, and upon news of bin Laden's death in 2011, Khashoggi famously published tweets of grief for his fallen friend.
Even the New York Times, not exactly known for challenging official narratives, conceded Khashoggi was a "tangled mix of royal service and Islamist sympathies."
While Khashoggi's grisly murder remains an outrage -- he did not deserve to die, let alone in such barbaric fashion -- far more worrisome is the Saudi regime's ongoing slaughter in Yemen, which was not mentioned in a single writeup about Mickelson's comments that this author could find.
Might this have something to do with the fact that the seven-year bloodbath has been waged with the full support of the US foreign policy establishment? It seems likely.
US officials feigned horror over Khashoggi's murder in 2018, but since then, few if any consequences have been brought down on one of the US' favored client states.
US weapons manufacturers continue to turn huge profits through business with Saudi Arabia, with massive arms deals allowing for the US to supply the Saudi military with warplanes, bombs, surface-to-air missiles, and other materiel that can only cause mass death, suffering and destruction.
The US Congress, in a rare act of principle, attempted to thwart the US' illegal involvement for the brutal war on Yemen, but a bill was promptly vetoed by President Trump. His successor, President Biden, later reneged on a promise to end support for Saudi Arabia in the conflict. In July 2021, just three years after Khashoggi's murder, the Biden White House rolled out the red carpet for a Saudi delegation while the slaughter in Yemen raged on.
The eruption of selective outrage over Mickelson's remarks comes as little surprise, but it's especially gross coming on the heels of the ongoing jingoist coverage of Chinese-American skiing star Eileen Gu, who has excelled at the Beijing games after choosing to compete for China -- much to the chagrin of American chauvinists who suddenly fancy themselves China scholars and experts on hUmAn RiGhTs ViOlAtIoNs.
On the topic of human rights, the US is No. 1 in the developed world -- in Covid deaths, gun deaths, prison and homeless populations, military spending, nuclear weapons stockpiles, weapons exports, and global military bases, to name a few.
Those, however, are not considered human rights violations by western media.
Mickelson is an ignoramus and a shameless money chaser, but that doesn't make him any different from the rest of the US' wealthy and famous, who see it as their god-given right to protect and expand their fortunes no matter who they end up in bed with. Lefty's rotten attitude is not unique; he's merely saying the quiet parts out loud.
The heinous murder of a lifelong player in the cesspool of Saudi monarchal politics is cynically dredged up as a cudgel when it suits the wealthy and their stenographers in the press, who no doubt tremble at the thought of a once-servile propagandist meeting his demise after opportunistically turning "dissident."
But the human rights violations of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Yemenis being slaughtered by Saudi Arabia with US weaponry are apparently less outrageous.
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