In politics, you’re either on message or you are losing. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to On Message, a weekly look at where the battle lines are drawn and who is winning the war of words.
This week… WORLD CLASS RESPONSE.
The World Cup of Football is in full swing in Qatar and there has been no shortage off tension on and off the pitch.
Many in the western world have openly questioned the ethics of awarding such a high-profile event to a nation that has a dubious record on human rights. That includes treatment of the thousands of migrant workers who helped build the infrastructure to host the games (500 of whom died, the Qatari government has admitted). It also extends to freedom of expression for fans attending the events as security teams deny entry to patrons wearing apparel deemed unacceptable and confiscating anything that may send any unapproved message.
On the field, a win-or-go-home match for the American team against Iran also brought with it pressures beyond just the final score. As protests for women’s rights continue to flare in Iran, the US team’s social media accounts posted and then deleted an image of the Iranian flag without the emblem of the Islamic Republic – what was meant to be a show of support that sparked an official complaint to FIFA’s ethics committee.
So, yeah, there was a lot going on.
And you might expect the tension to reach its highest point once the game kicked off.
But there was a potentially even more contentious point in the pre-match press conference when midfielder Tyler Adams took a challenging question from an Iranian reporter.
That’s a more difficult question than athletes routinely field – it has elements of accusation, geopolitics and clearly is looking for more than just information.
Adams handled it brilliantly.
The first thing he did right was tackle the reporter’s frustration head on. He apologized without returning malice or offering any excuse. Spot on. Case closed.
The second thing he did right was not answer a yes/no question with either yes or no. Once the question had been asked, he answered from his perspective, sharing his experience about living abroad and having to assimilate to other cultures. That experience has given him broader perspective that the issues we face in the US are not uniquely-American struggles.
The third element – and the most important one – is that he maintained his cool – even as the question was framed as a thinly-veiled accusation.
Adams did America proud – not by ducking a question but by remaining calm and collected when the heat turned up. No doubt it’s a useful skill in competition and it proved to be even more useful as he briefly spoke for a nation.
That’s it for this week.
More On Message in the next issue of the Utah Political Underground.
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