Bernie's billion dollar road show heading for Bahrain

As of this writing the Bahrain Grand Prix is still on the Formula 1 calendar for later this month.

Bahrain is the best example of the West's hypocritical approach to so-called Arab Spring. We're all over it when the masses are rising up against somebody who has outgrown their usefulness to us.

Hell, we'll even poke and prod the masses and offer them thousands of NATO bombing sorties worth of support if we have to.

On the other hand, if there's a spring thaw threatening in one of "our" Arab states, that's a whole 'nother matter. Such has been Bahrain's experience.

When it looked like mass street protests were starting to get traction, we wasted no time sending our Saudi proxies in to get a grip on things.

No misty-eyed platitudes about the will of the people.

No Hillary speeches about democracy and human rights.

No inspirational invocations from Obama about freedom.

Just a brutal crackdown.

So I can see where it would be useful for the rulers of Bahrain to use the massive TV audience that F-1 will focus on the country to show the world that everything is just fine.

I'm of two minds on this. One the one hand, it's nice to pretend that there's a firewall of sorts between sport and politics. Sometimes you just want to see the best footballers or baseball players or race drivers practice their craft, politics be damned.

On the other hand, when you're ruthlessly stamping out protest while showing the world everything is fine by bringing in the billionaire Ecclestone and his stable of millionaire drivers to put on their F-1 circus, you've pretty much married the sport to the politics anyway.

Frankly, I think it's a poor business decision on Ecclestone's part. He has managed to create a brand that countries have often used as a marker of their modernization. Malaysia and China come to mind.

Human rights groups both inside Bahrain and elsewhere have called on him to cancel the race, and that's the right thing to do.

Then again, that huge international TV audience just might give the opposition a platform they could only dream of.

After all, nothing will etch Arab Spring into our minds more effectively than the sight of Lewis Hamilton running over an IED at 200 mph.