“The Saudis could not have picked a more insulting and painful place to hold a golf tournament.”
Oregon U.S. Senator Ron Wyden
Saudi Arabia has a great deal of oil, which means they have a great deal of money. When money is your available tool, that is what you use. Saudi Arabia is sponsoring golf tournaments that compete with the PGA's tournaments. Their LIV tournaments--Roman numerals for the 54-hole events--are noteworthy because of their lavish prize money, the fees paid to the golf courses, the caddies, and everyone else involved.
Some people argue that sports can be an avenue toward better relations, so the tournament is a good thing. We cannot stay angry with Saudi Arabia forever, right? Remember "Ping Pong Diplomacy" that preceded Nixon's trip to China? Critics call what Saudi Arabia is doing "sportswashing." It is blood money, $25 million dollars of it, using sports to obscure a grievance and create a veneer of normality and good will.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
Newshound that I am, in my several years now living in Washington D.C., I monitor whatever news from Oregon sails across the Continental Divide and packs a punch on the East Coast.
Sadly, the only Oregon news that resonates on the national scene are articles on the demise of Portland or the wildfires burning up the West. Occasionally, a Southern Oregon article appears, such as the implications of dam removals on the Klamath River. Oregon's presidential primaries had national significance and notice in the past, but this year’s three-headed race for governor so far rates little mention.
Sports brought notice to Oregon, even amid the news of Cassidy Hutchinson and the demise of Roe v. Wade. Mix in Saudi Arabia and the genteel sport of golf, and voila, you find commentators and editorials weighing-in on Oregon’s exclusive Pumpkin Ridge Golf Course in suburban Portland. What is to make of a Saudi-funded new golf tournament--its first tournament in the USA? Many had praised Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a new, fresh, young leader, certain to deliver Saudi Arabia out of its social dark ages. Then Jamal Khashoggi disappeared and got dismembered and dissolved in Saudi hands. Biden called them a "pariah nation." Are they still a pariah nation? Are they ruining the PGA? Will they please sell the world more oil to bring gasoline price down?Franklin Roosevelt, in search of more oil to boost our war effort in 1945, charmed the pants off Saudi Arabian King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud on their meeting. The relationship enjoyed smooth sailing until a few bumps started to appear--such as the 1973 oil embargo and the rise of OPEC. That brought a recession, long lines at gas stations, and they tripled the price of gasoline at the pump, from 30 cents a gallon to 75 cents! Outrage. The fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals raised some more bumps, but the Bush Administration, in a deft move, refocused our ire on Saddam Hussein. After all, the Saudis have all that oil, and they are such great customers for American weapon manufacturers. The Saudi Sovereign Investment Fund spreads money around the globe, and we get our share and more. It includes an investment of $3.5 billion in a start-up called Uber, and $2 billion more to a start-up hedge fund created by America's own prince-in-law, Jared Kushner.
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Portland, Oregon has a special history with Saudi Arabia, so it cannot be a coincidence they came to Portland of all places for their first USA tournament. In 2016 a Saudi exchange student on a government scholarship was driving 70 miles per hour in a 25-mile zone and killed a 15 year old girl in a hit-and-run incident. Cameras viewed it as did 25 eyewitnesses. The Saudi government put up the $1 million dollar bail so he could be released on home confinement. He cut the GPS monitor and a black SUV sped him to the Portland airport, where he disappeared, presumably flown back to Saudi Arabia. Oregonians were incensed. The story had no legs outside of Oregon.
It is interesting to note just how much some Americans are willing to tolerate having Saudi money infect the genteel sport of golf, while others abhor it. That is the news story: Mixed emotions. Already four mayors of Washington County and many Portlanders are boycotting the tournament held at the exclusive Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club. Many PGA golfers want no part of the LIV tournament, while others, including big name pro golfers, have few qualms about participating. Some Portlanders will don their golfing hats and attend the tournament, while others will boycott. This weekend the nation turns its weary eyes on Oregon.
Will this just be another blip in the history of Oregon, as all will be forgotten? Maybe so. The sportswashing continues. After all, the next Saudi-sponsored golf tournament will be held in September at the Trump National Bedminster Golf Course in New Jersey. The Saudis love that.
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7 comments:
Yes, we have to tolerate Saudi money rubbing our noses in our dependence on their oil, and there are plenty of greedy patricians and ambitious pros to insure a full gallery.
Las Vegas doesn't mind either.
Golf...another fun way to "own the libs".
Let’s not forget that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 terrorist attacks were Saudi Arabians, as was Osama bin Laden. After the attacks, the Bush administration quickly evacuated Saudi nationals before they could be interviewed by the FBI. Just to make sure we forgot about the Saudi connection, Bush invaded Iraq. The press and government officials, including the White House press secretary Ari Fleisher, referred to the military misadventure as Operation Iraqi Liberation until somebody decided the acronym was too cynical.
Yes, folks, it’s all about oil.
"Oregonians were incensed. The story had no legs outside Oregon".
I followed this case very closely, in the days when The Oregonian online/OLive still countenanced readers comments. Mr. Mullen's characterization is both inadequate and yet sadly familiar. Poor Fallon Smart was used for political ends, then as now.
The Saudi national, Noorah, wasn't even enrolled in school when he killed Smart in August 2016, not long before Barack Obama left office. Unlicensed driver Noorah had accumulated a couple of dozen traffic/speeding citations in just the prior months alone.
OLive would not report on Noorah's background contemporaneously, and censored comments which tried to inform the public, including about the Saudi consulate putting up the bail, all while his attorneys tried for a year more to negotiate a non-prison offer.
When that failed, Noorah skipped. Even then, the area news media gave short shrift to the travesty and censored the mother's outrage. The media line remained that quelling anti-Muslim and anti-alien sentiment was priority one for the story.
Pious sentiment suddenly erupted concerning Fallon Smart after the violent death in Turkey of another Saudi national, Khashoggi, in 2018. Smart's case and others like it were newly re-purposed--got "legs"--so as to cudgel Trump-Saudi foreign policy.
Surprise, the last line of Mr. Mullen's piece here is the tail that wags this dog. Liberals cannot let Trump go (can't we agree to let him?), so the Smart family is re-exploited for that purpose. The Smarts couldn't even get a call back from Senator Wyden let alone an airing of grievances with The O while "Islamophobia" remained the operative news media spin, even after the selfish swine fled the country. Khashoggi (!) made Fallon worth caring about.
The Saudi driver who killed Fallon Smart had been a PCC student. I was teaching there at that time.
There was another one of these oil legacy guys driving a new orange Corvette around the campus with a vanity license plate that read, “UAE-BOY.”
PCC was (and still is) exquisitely careful about seeing no evil when it might reflect badly on Islam, or as the woke would say, “the religion of peace.”
OK, maybe I was wrong about this being all about oil. Perhaps it’s all about religion. In Saudi Arabia they pay lip service to Islam. Here we make a pretense of being Christian – a religion renowned for its pacifism.
Americans would never go to another country, kill people and then skip out – never mind all the Iraqi civilians massacred in Nissour Square by employees of Blackwater Security. After all, they changed their name so it doesn’t count.
Deliciously ironic that the first LIV golf tournament, in London, was won by a white South African; and second place went to a white South African. Perfect!
Addendum: The Oregonian’s longtime “star” opinionist—and sanctimonious muckraker—Steve Duin in a June 26 column covers the same timeline I just did, just without mentioning The O’s censorship pre-Khashoggi of the true identity of Fallon’s killer and his various multi-government enablers. He has the gall to quote Ron Wyden as if on behalf of the unquoted family, which doubtless would not give Wyden nor Duin the time of day, because of their conveniently evolving politicized priorities at the expense of justice for Fallon.
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