The Shelf Life of Outrage

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

In 1994-95, Major League Baseball endured a long work stoppage that resulted in both the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and the first two weeks of the 1995 campaign.

Fans were outraged, burned their season tickets. Most blamed the players for the simple reason that what players do is understandable — they hit, they field, they run, and if they do it poorly, they’re not worth the millions they’re paid — and certainly not worth the millions more they want.

Fans in stadiums, as the strike approached, held up signs that read “Traitors” and “We’ll Work for Free.”

Many vowed never to return.

And for a while, they didn’t.

In 1995, attendance dropped 25% from the 1993 season.

But then a funny thing happened.

By 1996, fans had forgotten they had vowed never to return and … returned. By 1997 — the year before Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire had a dramatic home run duel that spurred even greater turnouts at the ballpark — baseball saw its the third-highest average on record at that time.

Outrage is a light sleeper.

This is a long way of saying, the angst that accompanied the announced merger between the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour and LIV Golf will quickly dissipate. By next April, Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman could personally behead Jim Nantz on the 11th hole at Augusta and golf fans, journalists, and aficionados would still tune in for the green-jacket ceremony.

LIV Golf, which is financed by a sovereign (state-owned) wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, began in 2021 as an alternative to the PGA Tour, has been accused of pilfering the established organization’s best players by offering them gobs of petrochemical dollars. What chafed golf fans, though, as well as sentient human beings (not always the same thing), was that the Saudis were implicated in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist, in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018.

Established stars like Phil Mickelson, who joined LIV shortly after the league was announced, didn’t help matters when he talked about his new benefactors: “They’re scary motherf—ers to get involved with,” Mickelson said. “We know they killed [reporter and US resident 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 does not have the voice in his head that many have that tells him to stop talking.

With the announced merger — and the details are still sketchy — the PGA Tour and its CEO, Jay Monahan, which had been occupying the moral high ground by refusing to grant LIV respectability, are being portrayed as amoral and rapacious for agreeing to partner with the kind of monsters who used bone saws to decapitate Khashoggi and flog, imprison, and fine homosexuals.

But maybe we’re being too hard on golf.

The Saudi’s hands are covered in blood — as is every other part of their body — and neither of the last two administrations shone particularly brightly in condemning such abominable behavior.

Even after US intelligence determined the crown prince was responsible, Donald Trump said, “America first! Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t! The Biden administration then announced visa restrictions on 96 involved in harassing activists and journalists, but also refused to blame bin Salman personally for ordering the attack.

Bin Salman could have very well tweeted, “I could decapitate an American in the Turkish Embassy and I wouldn’t lose any American support.”

I never like quoting George Will, but he once made a comment about a feeble response Reagan officials had made in relation to the then-Soviet Union: “They love commerce,” Will said, “more than they loathe communism.”

We like petrochemicals more than headless journalists.

And it’s not like we haven’t been here before. Fifteen of the 19 plane hijackers on 9/11 that crashed into the World Trade Center were from Saudi Arabia, but we went to war with Iraq because — why was that again? Oh, yeah, to stabilize the region. Only a cynic would say it had something to do with the fact we didn’t buy hydrocarbons from Iraq.

Call me a cynic.

Nobody who watches golf now will stop because the PGA Tour and LIV have come together. Nobody who didn’t watch golf before will now start because the best players in the world will be competing against each other in Tucson at the Phoenix Open.

Thing is, nobody actually loses in this merger between the PGA Tour and LIV — not the players, who will keep playing; not the fans, who will keep tuning in; not the sponsors, who will keep selling Cadillacs and financial-investment products.

Nobody, perhaps, except humanity.

Outrage in America, for all the bifurcation and bombast we see and hear, especially on social media, is like thunder and lightning that are followed by sprinkles.

For all the noise and posturing, people are still drinking Bud Light, eating Chick-fil-A, shopping at Hobby Lobby and Target, supporting Donald Trump for president, buying Chinese-made merchandise, visiting Moscow, wearing South African diamonds, and going to baseball games.

When it comes to moral indignation, it really is the thought that counts — often that’s all there is.

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman” has just been released. In addition, he is the author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2023

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