Impromptus

Saudi money for all, &c.

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Phil Mickelson signs autographs following a practice round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., May 16, 2023. (Adam Cairns / USA TODAY Sports via Reuters)
On professional golf, Tiananmen Square, affirmative action, Ron DeSantis, an intrepid reporter, and more

This time of year, I think of a snatch of poetry, which is rare for me. Speaking of rare: “And what is so rare as a day in June?” To read the entire poem, go here. It is by James Russell Lowell, that sterling man of letters (1819–91). Wish I had known him, and studied under him.

• Several people have been nice enough to ask me what I think of the merger of the PGA Tour and the Saudi tour (formally known as “LIV Golf”). They do this because they know I am interested in both golf and Saudi Arabia. Frankly, I said all I have to say in a piece last year: “The Saudi Golf Tour Is Blatant ‘Sportswashing.’”

That tour had its first tournament in June 2021. The tour is funded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, whose chairman is the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is effectively the dictator of the country.

A lot of PGA Tour players jumped to the Saudi tour, for big paydays. One of those players was Phil Mickelson — who made an interesting admission to his biographer: “They’re scary motherf***ers to get involved with. We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay.”


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Pressed on this question in an interview, Greg Norman, the Saudis’ CEO for their tour, said, “Every country has got a cross to bear.”

The PGA Tour drew a line in the sand: If you play on the Saudi tour, you cannot play on ours. You have to decide. With increasing frequency, the players decided on the Saudi tour, for major money.

Earlier this week, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and the Saudis’ Yasir al-Rumayyan made a shock announcement: The two tours would merge. From now on, it would be Saudi money for all.

So, money has spoken, as it usually does. But it is still well to remember the political prisoners, who are tortured, sometimes to death.

I have sat with many family members of prisoners. The more detail you know, the more you are sickened by the Saudi regime. Of course, this regime has many admirers, in free countries. So does Putin’s. So does the regime in Cuba. It was ever thus, and always will be.

Let me post the final paragraphs of my piece last year:

I am all for making money. But do the golfers really have to make money off the Saudis? None of them has ever been in danger of going on the bread line, so far as I’m aware.

In my experience, people either care about human rights or they don’t. (Some care about them selectively, depending on the victimizers and the victims.) I often have occasion to quote a Lyle Lovett song: “It may be no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me.”

• No regime is better at sportswashing than China’s. Think of their Olympic Games. Think of their enmeshment with the NBA.

I was glad to see our secretary of state put out the following, on June 3:

For the past 30 years or so, I have written about Tiananmen Square and its people over and over again. Perhaps I could link to one piece: “Standing Tall for China.” This is about Fang Zheng, a hero (and I don’t use that word lightly).

• Evil is stalking Afghanistan — for example:

Nearly 80 girls were poisoned and hospitalized in two separate attacks at their primary schools in northern Afghanistan . . .

It is thought to be the first time this kind of assault has happened since the Taliban swept to power in August 2021 and began their crackdown on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls.

For this report in its entirety, go here.

• A report out of Washington is headed “As Supreme Court considers affirmative action, colleges see few other ways to diversity goals.” One sentence reads, “At Amherst College, officials have estimated that going entirely race-neutral would reduce Black, Hispanic and Indigenous populations by half.”

Affirmative action is a big, big issue, and I am jotting Impromptus. There are good — certainly honorable — arguments for affirmative action. But I would ask its advocates to consider one thing.

As a rule, people arguing for affirmative action have already got theirs. What I mean is, they have been admitted to college, maybe grad school, too. They got their first job, and second, and third. They are set.

But they ought to consider people — people of all kinds — trying to make their way in the world. In tipping the scales for some — even with pure motives — you may well be tipping the scales against others.

The thing about cartoons is, they’re cartoonish. But they can still make an important point, succinctly, sometimes even ingeniously.

In the ’90s, there was a cartoon drawn by I-don’t-remember-who. Wish I could credit him. The cartoon had four panels, or squares. President Clinton is talking. In the first square, he says, “I favor affirmative action because I have a heart.” In the second square, he says, “I favor affirmative action because I have a conscience.” In the third square, he says, “I favor affirmative action because I have a sense of history.” In the fourth square, he says, “I favor affirmative action because I have . . .” — whereupon a little guy comes up and says “. . . a job already.”

That is not the end of the story, the end of the argument. But the individual should be remembered. The individual, amid all the races, ethnicities, sexes, and classes.

• Ron DeSantis was campaigning at an event in Iowa. As this report tells us, he “signed the Bible of a man who thanked DeSantis for ‘standing up to Disney.’” Personally, I think this is gross — the signing of the Bible. I know Republicans will disagree. They would agree, however, if the politician were Biden, Harris, Obama, Clinton (either one) . . .

Do we have anything but tribalism in these United States?

• On the subject of states: In Michigan, we speak of going “up North.” Or a person who “lives up North.” Or is from “up North.” What do we mean by “North”? Where’s the line? A Detroit radio station inquired.

I feel pretty strongly the answer is 4.

• A little music? For a review of Joshua Bell (violin) and Daniil Trifonov (piano) in a joint recital, go here. For a review of The Flying Dutchman (Wagner) at the Metropolitan Opera, go here.

• A little language?

As I see it, that is all wrong. It is probably a direct translation from a Romance language, probably Spanish. Idiomatic English would say “Love at First Slice” (no “the”).

• How about the winning word — the ultimately winning word — from this year’s National Spelling Bee? “Psammophile” (“an organism that prefers or thrives in sandy soils or areas”).

To read a news article, go here.

• “Françoise Gilot, Artist in the Shadow of Picasso, Is Dead at 101.” (That obit is here.) Ms. Gilot had relationships with Pablo Picasso and Jonas Salk, among others. (She was married to Dr. Salk.) Not quite Alma Mahler level — but maybe tied with Cosima Liszt?

(Alma was married to Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, and Franz Werfel. Cosima, the daughter of Franz Liszt, was married to Hans von Bülow and Richard Wagner.)

(If you don’t know Tom Lehrer’s song about Alma — treat yourself to it, here.)

• For the Washington Post, Harrison Smith has written a very good obit of Claudia Rosett — here. Over the generations, reporters have often been described as “intrepid.” “Intrepid reporter” is a cliché. But Claudia really was: She was intrepid, she was a reporter, and she was an intrepid reporter. She demonstrated this in the first Chechen war. And in investigating the U.N.’s “oil for food” program, regarding Iraq. Above all, she demonstrated it when covering the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

She was also, let me tell you, a warm, lovely person.

A passage from Mr. Smith’s obit:

Ms. Rosett believed in “free markets and free men,” as she put it, favoring the conservative economic theories of Milton Friedman (a friend of her father, who once served as dean of the University of Chicago’s business school) and the hawkish approach of officials such as John Bolton . . .

Bless you, Claudia, always.

See you later.

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