My parents tell me there was a time when it was hard to be a cartoonist.
The problem was not necessarily the lack of willing participants (in the long history of the world, the human race has never loved ignorance). Rather, the limiting factor was a social environment that discouraged displays of stupidity. Through the sheer force of the collective human spirit, my parents tell me, we were able to push problematic ideologies, blatantly immoral beliefs, and generally gross displays of sensitive masculinity right into the gutter of the society they belonged to.
The reason wasn’t arrogance, it wasn’t sanctity, and it certainly wasn’t hegemony. It was something much simpler: shame.
Sunday afternoon at Shinnecock, the crowds at the US Open showed us that if shame ever existed, it’s long gone. For him the second time at a major golf event on Long Island in the last 10 months, fans in attendance spent most of the afternoon proudly holding on to their ignorance, loudly rooting against the wire-to-wire winner (and several other players, including Rory McIlroy) in a way that forced the USGA to issue a mid-tournament apology via NBC.
The 24 hours since have had no shortage of hand-wringing over the whole affair, including some suggestions that Long Island be banned from the major league rotation altogether. As a Long Islander who is proud of his golfing heritage and the people who protect it, I cringe at those suggestions. As a journalist who has watched both of Long Island’s major golf events of the past 12 months up close, I can’t say I disagree with them.
of crowd at Shinnecock they weren’t the worst I’ve seen in a golf tournament. They weren’t particularly dirty or “out of line”. No one yelled at a reverse or cursed a parent. In fact, for a few seconds on Sunday, I realized I wasn’t listening to the taunts because I’m so used to them. And then I thought for a few more seconds and realized this The felt ashamed. Is the only time we can agree that the house is on fire after it has already burned to the ground?
I came of age in the age of social networks. I was in high school when I made my first Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts. We didn’t know anything about it algorithms back then, we were just posting in the abyss. Tech leaders made the idea of ​​the “virtual town hall” sound exciting and civic-minded, and for a while we proved them right. Then, once we were hooked, we realized we were doomed to spend the rest of our time remembering why no one likes to attend town halls in the first place: The most obnoxious people tend to talk the most.
On Sunday at the US Open, we saw what happens when our lives revolve around those “virtual municipalities” — and when those municipalities have changed their rules to deliberately inflame our every sensibility. The audience wasn’t cheering, but booing. The shouters were not fans but commentators. The players inside the ropes were not human at all.
Being alive is a beautiful thing, and being alive off the ropes on Sunday at the US Open is especially alive. There’s a beautiful, historic golf course on display, an incredible achievement in the future, and a whole bunch of regular guys racing to see a lifelong dream come true. To flatten that experience into our pits of online virtue and outrage—and then act on those feelings in broad daylight without an ounce of empathy for the shared humanity of the people around you? It’s not just wrong, it’s sad.
My parents tell me there was never a time when empathy wasn’t a human strength. It has always been something to work on, slowly and often painfully. It was worth it because it brought us closer to each other, and whether you believe in a god or not, there was something sacred about the experience of being known.
Still, if we couldn’t bring ourselves to empathize—because of a feeling we couldn’t make money or a contender in a golf tournament we didn’t particularly like—there it Was a time when we could still force ourselves to find our better angels.
Not because we were better, smarter or knew more. But because we felt an emotion that only seems to rub off on the people who need it most — a feeling that will be familiar to many golf fans on the morning of Monday’s US Open on Long Island and around the world.
Shame.
The author welcomes your comments at james.colgan@golf.com.
