TWhat he rules on red carpets and colorful podiums is that none of the winners say anything about politics. Surrounding players, such as the loser, the judge, the spouse, and the culprit, should also not say anything. Because it draws attention to the huge gap where normal opinion should be. Some organizations, such as the Olympic Committee, have clear restrictions, while others simply create an expectation that nothing will be said. May I remind you all that years have gone by when this wasn’t a big deal. Politics was a 9-to-5 job, sports and showbiz were casual weekend jobs, and no one expected the two to intersect.

But the year is 2026, and the outside world is invading everything. Prince William said at Sunday night’s BAFTAs that he had not seen the award-winning film Hamnet. explain: “I need to be pretty calm, and I’m not at the moment. I’ll save it.” Look, you can ride a horse and say, “Mate, you’re the chairman of the BAFTAs, so you couldn’t find a moment of peace watching this movie that could have won it all?” Or you could speculate about what caused William’s anxiety, between the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the growing demand to know what happened and when. Alternatively, you could say: “Actually, ‘Hamnet’ is the perfect movie for your troubled mind. It’s very sleepy, yet quite forgiving. You can sleep through most of the movie and still know exactly what’s going to happen.”

But in the end, William made the right decision. Coming from a dynasty whose highest tenet was ignoring things, there are plenty of things he could justifiably ignore, but if he were to admit that he couldn’t ignore this one thing that everyone was talking about, then that was a moderately polite way of acknowledging him. Naturally, it’s not say Anything. But in the kingdom of silence, the man with one cry is king.

The Grammy Awards earlier this month served as an objective lesson in how times have changed, with many celebrities openly pro-immigration statements that would have been controversial in the past – Olivia Dean said: her grandparents were immigrants – By 2026, it was just entry-level “I am Spartacus” stuff. Wearing an “ICE Out” badge was solid but unremarkable next to Billie Eilish’s “No One Is an Illegal in Stolen Land” and Bad Bunny’s “Before I Say Thank God, I’m ICE Out. We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We’re human beings, we’re Americans.”

back to that olympian rulebookRule 50.2 reads: “Demonstrations or political, religious or racial propaganda of any kind are not permitted in Olympic venues, venues or other areas.” The text itself belongs to a simpler era, as it abbreviates “demonstration” to “propaganda,” as if only pedants would claim that the two are different. To accept that protests are inseparable from propaganda this year would be to admit that we are in a world beyond good and evil, and maybe we are too, but I’m not sure I want that to go down, especially after the Olympic Committee banned Russia from protesting for the fourth consecutive Games. You should know that there is still a difference.

Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladislav Heraskevich twice defied this rule, once by holding a photo of a dead compatriot on his helmet, and again by holding an emotional handmade sign that read “No war in Ukraine.” It felt unpunished. Among the dead were his friends. But they banned him anyway. And it was sheer luck for authorities with spines but no teeth that Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Läggried revealed that he had been cheating on her with his girlfriend just two days after winning the bronze medal. The world’s attention was asked to choose between the important and the strange, and rightly so. Heraskevich was forgotten. Raygreed was forgiven, Although not by his girlfriend.

Several US athletes issue statements blame their governmentin the sense of being subtle enough but unmistakable. old curse Updated: May we live in a time when even award ceremonies are interesting.

Zoe Williams is a columnist for the Guardian

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