Battle lines, drawn

 Well, now I guess it's a war for real. The rebs have fired on Sumter. The Sons of Liberty have beaten back the redcoats at Concord. Yamamoto has blown up Battleship Row.

And, in less momentous conflict news, the PGA has kicked 17 players out of the club for taking what even one of the banned (Phil Mickelson) has admitted is blood money.

Among the names of the officially banished are Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Lee Westwood, Charl Schwartzel and Sergio Garcia. Also an assortment of Graeme McDowells, Louis Oosthuizens, Ian Poulters and Martin Kaymers.

All are presumably in London this weekend, playing for gory Saudi dough while LIV Series security goons duck-walk reporters out of news conferences for asking embarrassing questions about dismembered journalists and murdered women and children and the like.

The latter actually happened, by the way. 

It's not a good look for the LIV, and a tiny contrarian part of the Blob thinks the PGA's ban of the LIV defectors is not a good look, either.  It smacks of exactly the authoritarianism the defectors are supposedly defecting to protest. Way to make their point for them, ya dopes.

Still ...

Still, it's hard to feel sorry for the Mickelsons and DJs 'n' them. Just as it's hard to feel sorry for anyone who compromises principle for cash.

A lot of people do it, of course, and they all deserve the appropriate scorn. Giving a bunch of rich golfers a pass because of that, as some folks out there seem to want to, is the flimsiest of debate strategies. It's the sort of whataboutism people resort to when they can't defend a thing.

And what these guys are doing is indefensible. Just like, yes, F1 and World Cup soccer crawling in bed with Middle Eastern thugs and the NBA crawling in bed with Chinese thugs is indefensible.

No single one mitigates any other one. Try again, boys and girls.

But back to the LIV.

All that money luring already moneyed golfers to help the Saudis "sportswash" their hideousness is an offense that carries its own punishment, or so the Blob thinks. Because of  all those chunky appearance fees and guaranteed payouts the LIV is offering, the public not unreasonably may view it as nothing but a series of exhibitions. Because if everyone in the field gets a wad of cash, for what are they really competing at the end of the day?

Yes, the winners get more, but so what? A guy who's already richer than God getting even richer is not the sort of drama that draws people to sports. No one flocked to "Hoosiers" to see Big Giant Consolidated High School beat Other Big Giant Consolidated High School for the state title. An embarrassment of riches is just, well, boring, frankly.

And so what's likely to happen is the defectors may vanish from the radar, at least to an extent. 

Hey, did you see what DJ did this weekend?

Who?

DJ. Dustin Johnson.

Oh, yeah. You mean that guy who's traveling around the world playing exhibitions now?

That sort of thing.

And so ...

Enjoy your blood money, boys. It was nice knowin' ya.