The rule on a red carpet or a parti-coloured podium is that none of the victors say anything about politics. None of the surrounding players \u2013 the losers, the judges, the spouses, the hangers-on \u2013 should say anything either, because it draws attention to the vast lacuna where normal opinions should be. Some people, such as the Olympic committee, have explicit strictures, while other bodies merely create the expectation that nothing will be said, and can I just remind everyone that many years passed when this was no big deal. Politics was 9-to-5 work, and sports and showbiz were weekend-casual work, and nobody expected the two to intersect.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 2026, however, and the outside world intrudes on everything. Prince William said at Sunday night\u2019s Bafta ceremony that he hadn\u2019t seen the winning film, Hamnet, explaining<\/a>: \u201cI need to be in quite a calm state and I am not at the moment. I will save it.\u201d Look, you could get on your high horse and say: \u201cMate, you\u2019re the president of Bafta, could you not have found a moment of peace in which to watch the film that was likely to win everything?\u201d Or you could speculate on what, between the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the rising swell of voices wanting to know who knew what, when, could have caused William\u2019s disquiet. Or you could say: \u201cActually, Hamnet would be the perfect film for your troubled mind, being immensely soporific and yet quite forgiving; you can sleep through a large chunk of it and still know exactly what\u2019s about to happen\u201d.<\/p>\n But on balance, William made the right call: there are so many events he could legitimately ignore, being from a dynasty whose highest creed is ignoring things, but if we accept that he couldn\u2019t ignore this one thing that everyone\u2019s talking about, his was a medium-graceful way of acknowledging it. Naturally, it doesn\u2019t say anything. But in the kingdom of the silent, the one-squeak man is king.<\/p>\n The Grammys earlier this month were an object lesson in how times have changed, with so many of the celebrities making overt statements in support of immigrants that what would once have counted as controversial \u2013 Olivia Dean\u2019s statement that her grandparents were immigrants<\/a> \u2013 by 2026, was no more than entry-level \u201cI am Spartacus\u201d stuff. Next to Billie Eilish\u2019s \u201cnobody\u2019s illegal on stolen land\u201d and Bad Bunny\u2019s \u201cBefore I say thanks to God, I\u2019m gonna say: ICE out. We\u2019re not savage, we\u2019re not animals, we\u2019re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans,\u201d wearing an \u201cICE Out\u201d badge was solid but unremarkable.<\/p>\n Going back to that Olympian rulebook<\/a>, rule 50.2 reads: \u201cNo kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.\u201d That wording itself belongs to a simpler time, since it elides \u201cdemo\u201d with \u201cpropaganda\u201d, as if only a pedant would say those were two different things. This year, to accept that protest was indivisible from propaganda would be to accept that we\u2019re in a world beyond right and wrong, which maybe we are, but I\u2019m not sure I want that handed down by the Olympic committee, especially when it has protest-banned Russia in four consecutive games, so must still know there\u2019s a difference.<\/p>\n The Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych defied the rule twice, first with a photo of dead compatriots on his helmet<\/a>, second with a movingly homemade-looking sign that read: \u201cNo War in Ukraine\u201d. It felt unpunishable; some of the dead were his friends. But they banned him anyway, and it was sheer luck for the spineless yet not toothless authorities that the Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm L\u00e6greid chose to reveal two days before, straight after his bronze win, that he\u2019d cheated on his girlfriend<\/a>. The world\u2019s attention was asked to choose between things that matter and things that are weird, which was a no-brainer. Heraskevych was forgotten. L\u00e6greid was forgiven, though not by his girlfriend<\/a>.<\/p>\n A handful of US athletes made statements decrying their government<\/a>, in terms delicate enough but unmistakable. The old curse<\/a> has been updated: may you live in times when even your awards ceremonies are interesting.<\/p>\n Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n