Chief of Sportwashing.

The Santa Monica-based World Surf League has worked extremely hard during these past few years to place itself squarely in the camp of social progressives. From patting itself on the back for making equal pay between and women, adopting the most liberal trans inclusion policy, robust environmental bush planting and ruthlessly muzzling those who disagree, many have celebrated the acronym WSL also standing for “Woke Surf League.”

A brave new world.

Except.

Hours ago, the “global home of surfing” came under heavy fire for being a super gross polluter. The average surfer with his one-board-per-year and one-trip-per-five was fingered as 50% more environmentally damaging than the normal citizen. The professional surfer with her six-boards-per-event and three-trips-per-month, then, at least 90% more more environmentally damaging.

Whilst breaking out the scrub brushes an attempting a nice green wash, the League was hit once more, this time for tacitly supporting far-right Central American strongman Nayib Bukele and his brutalist incarceration spree.

The Guardian recently profiled Jose Antonio Potes and his childhood pal Manuel Castrillon, both Colombian, who traveled to El Salvador looking for work. Once there, the two were locked up in a draconian anti-gang mass arrest and spent over three months in jail with no trial or explanation.

“It started really making sense then that they were just throwing innocent people in jail to show them off to the outside world,” Potes said as he met many behind bars who were there by mistake. “You no longer need to have any link with the gangs to be locked up in El Salvador. You simply need to be a young male,” lawyer Ruth Elonaro López added.

Young and male or wholly female as other reports suggest that “lesbian women” are being taken from their homes and tossed in the clink after being denounced by strange taxi cab drivers.

The World Surf League, as you know, is headed to El Salvador in a few short weeks, for the Championship Tour stop number seven, the Surf City El Salvador Pro.

Exciting.

But how do you think WSL CEO Erik Logan and self-described architect of the grand liberal reforms Chief of Sport Jessi Miley-Dyer will react to right-leaning shenanigans south of the border? Will Bukele’s name be banished from the booth, like the great conservative Bethany Hamilton, or will announcers be instructed to simply look the other way?

Will Wright take a knee for the nearly 70,000 people recently locked up, many without trial?

Currently more questions than answers.

Breathe the hypocrisy.

The World Surf League, self-billed “global home of surfing,” is not shy when it comes to burnishing its environmental bonafides. Talking points sent down from twin chiefs Erik Logan and Jessi Miley-Dyer include referring to the ocean as “office, home and playground” thereby necessitating preservation. Action items involve coordinating planting a bush in Western Australia. But behind the scenes, deals are struck with landfill-ready, carbon spewing Chinese SUVs and any other company willing to open a chequebook in order to be covered by a green wave.

Well, it appears the jig might be up as a new entirely damning BBC piece fingers the average surfer as having a 50% greater carbon footprint than an everyday Joe. Professional surfers, with the amount of boards chewed through, non-stop airline travel, passively shilling Great Wall Motors, certainly scratching 80%.

An excerpt:

Historically, surfing has had an image of a sport and lifestyle that is in tune with, and protects, oceans and the environment.

But environmental campaigners say the manufacture and export of polystyrene and polyurethane boards and neoprene wetsuits comes with a significant carbon footprint.

One long-standing study estimated the manufacture of a traditional polyurethane board, covered with epoxy resins and exported across the globe, could be responsible for producing the equivalent of up to 250kg of carbon dioxide.

Yikes.

The reporter did find a glimmer of hope, however, in the top UK women’s surfer Lucy Campbell who has declared, unlike the World Surf League, that she will no longer accept sponsorships from gross polluters.

“It’s often hard to turn down a big pay cheque, if they’re a brand that isn’t sustainable, but it’s definitely more worthwhile in the long run,” she said, adding, “I think that they (the brands) need to take the onus and make that difference. It may come at a higher price but I think eventually that price will come down as technology advances.”

Mark Dale, the chief marketing officer for Agit Global, the US company that makes the mass-produced board Wavestorm dumpster-anticipating VAL boards, might have agreed, in theory, but quickly pointed the finger elsewhere, stating, “The misconceptions about Wavestorm is that we are creating this mass of boards that are meant for landfill, but you can use a Wavestorm board for many years. We don’t build boards as disposable boards here.”

Cool.

The World Surf League’s Logan and Miley-Dyer are yet to respond but be on the lookout for another bush planting somewhere near you.

Or maybe an exciting new partnership with clean coal.

Beef.

Rage, in all its many forms, seems to be reaching epidemic status in these United States of America. Whether it is exploding in digital forums, losing mind whilst waiting for the grocery checkout, screaming swears and splashing in the lineup (often justified) or launching into a full tirade on an airline, people, it seems, have lost their bearing.

I was on a flight to New York, recently, and a portly woman one row back became incensed that her carry-on bag would have to go in the back of the plane and not over her head. One of the stewardesses dared call her “honey” when explaining the situation and that set her right off. Multiple deep swears, face beet red, full steam ahead down fury road. She was eventually escorted off by security to the cheers of other passengers, delaying the trip by a good hour, though I sat and pondered her actions. She must have known her outburst was not going to have any desired effect, what with many, many stories about disruptive passengers being kicked off, heavily fined and placed on no-fly lists.

Entirely self-destructive.

Road rage is, of course, the grandaddy of all the various rages, coming into vogue in the mid-1990s and growing in popularity yearly. What once consisted of honking, raising a middle finger, maybe riding a bumper and flashing brights has, in this age, turned entirely deadly.

Take the tragic story of the 25-year-old Jordanian immigrant Mohammad Khair Hani Ali Zaid Al-Kilani, for example. The young man had come to Southern California based on falling in love with the lifestyle as a boy and was truly living his dream. He discovered surfing, according The Los Angeles Times, and enjoyed music on the beach with his friends after sunset sessions.

Well, one week ago from today, Al-Kilani was driving near Marina del Rey when a driver cut him off and continued driving erratically. At a stoplight, the young man got out of his car and approached the other driver only to be shot, point blank, in the chest.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

But what sort of insanity is this? Both getting out of vehicle, in this day and age, I suppose, and/or straight murdering someone who approaches you?

Madness.

And have these topsy-turvy times forced you to change your behavior? Are you more wary, less inclined to start a conflict?

Scared?

Crazy.

Just crazy.

Real quickly while you’re here, though, have you watched Netflix’s Beef yet?

It’s very good.