Doyel: This is us; hating Brittney Griner for going to Russian jail, loving LIV golfers
INDIANAPOLIS – When did we become a country that celebrates American golfers willing to accept blood money behind the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001 – but attacks one of our basketball players who had been unfairly confined 10 months in Russian custody?
Better yet:
When will we stop being that country?
Stick to sports, you say. I say: Pay attention to what sports is telling us about ourselves.
We’re not paying attention to anything else. Kyle Rittenhouse gets in a car and goes 20 miles with an AR-15 because he feels like hunting people, he kills two and is acquitted for it, and he’s a hero to some. Colin Kaepernick takes a knee for the national anthem, and to many of those same people he’s a villain.
Make sense of that.
Or just make sense of what has been happening for a year in golf, juxtaposed with what happened Saturday to WNBA star Brittney Griner at a Dallas airport. Why do we cheer Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Co. not just for accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saudi Arabian bank believed to behind the 9-11 attack on New York City – but because they took that money?
Why do we hate Brittney Griner?
Saudis are innocent, because they say so?
There are things we don’t know, and this is where we show our hand.
Do we know the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, which backs the LIV Tour, backed the bombers who brought down the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, killing 2,996 people in New York City? We don’t know that for sure, no. But that’s what we, as the country that was attacked, generally believe. And it’s what the families of 9-11 victims absolutely believe.
Do we know the “crime” that landed Brittney Griner in a Russian prison would’ve been mostly ignored here in America? We don’t know that for sure, no. But we know that travelers found to have less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in airports across America – like the one in Denver, for example – are generally asked to throw it away before boarding their flight. TSA agents tend to point the offender to a trashcan, not a jail cell, because that level of cannabis isn’t even illegal in Colorado or 22 other states, though U.S. airports answer to federal laws.
What personal laws, grievances, impulses, do we answer to?
Some of us see in Koepka and DeChambeau a study in capitalism, of personal choice. We see the gray area there, pretending a Saudi Arabian government known for human rights atrocities, like the killing of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi, isn’t so bad. Maybe those people weren’t behind the 9-11 attacks. The Saudis deny it, you know. Let’s take their word.
Some of us see in Griner a criminal, someone who should’ve known better than to bring cannabis into Russia, someone who was not “wrongfully detained,” as our own government decided. We see someone who deserved what she got because, that’s what the Russian government decided.
Do you understand what you just read?
We believe the Saudis over the U.S government, because it allows us to keep loving Koepka, DeChambeau and Johnson.
We believe the Russians over the U.S. government, because it allows us to keep hating Brittney Griner.
Wonder why.
More: WNBA players, coaches call for charter flights after Brittney Griner harassed at airport
This is us: Idiot heckles Brittney Griner
What happened in the Dallas airport was cruel to some and celebrated by others.
Brittney Griner is walking through DFW with her Phoenix Mercury teammates, on her way to Indianapolis of all places for Sunday’s game against the Indiana Fever, when a far-right hatemonger shows up with a phone, videoing himself as he shouts nonsensically at Griner about hating America or something.
Hating America? Yeah, well, that’s what some people say of athletes who kneel for the national anthem to protest the murder of Black suspects at the hands of police. Interestingly, those same people don’t accuse a man who repeatedly dodged the draft during the Vietnam era of hating America.
They elect him president.
This is our generation’s war, a battle for our soul – and for our future, a choice of love or hate – and we are losing. Hate is winning, because we have lost our ability to be introspective, to see the other side. Not enough people who generally think like me, for example, are troubled by whatever was reported to be on the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, before the 2020 election. Did Hunter use his dad’s position for personal gain? Did his father use his power to squash the inquiry?
This is one of those gray areas I mentioned earlier, and please, don’t shower me with links to reputable news sites saying whatever you believe about Hunter Biden and his father. I can show you links from reputable sites – including www.judiciary.house.gov – that say the opposite.
What’s real? Hard to know in an era where one 2024 U.S. presidential candidate would use a deep fake video to place another candidate, Ron DeSantis, in a conversation with Hitler – while DeSantis would respond with a deep fake video that puts Donald Trump in a hug with his longtime chief medical officer, Anthony Fauci.
There are people who believe that Trump-Fauci hug was real, even though Trump openly despised Fauci. There are people who would love to believe the DeSantis-Hitler conversation was real, if only Hitler weren’t, you know, dead.
We believe what we want in an era where one of the most influential “news” organizations in the country blatantly lied to its millions of viewers about 2020 election results, with Fox News’ most powerful voice at the time, Tucker Carlson, going so far as to publicly worship Trump while privately telling friends, “I hate him passionately.”
We are being told lies in our search for the truth, or in the case of Hunter Biden we have abandoned the search entirely, and the result is a country where we cannot stick to sports.
We mock Brittney Griner for being sent to a Russian prison for having less THC in her backpack than millions of us have in ours, right now. Why do we do that? You know why.
We don’t merely forgive Koepka and DeChambeau for joining the Saudi-backed LIV Tour, but cheer them for doing it. Why? You know why.
We are angry and broken, and sports is no longer our escape. It is our mirror.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Brooks Koepka a hero, Brittney Griner a villain? Only in America.
