Two years ago, LeBron James took great offense when Knicks president Phil Jackson referred to the NBA star’s business associates as “a posse.”
James: “It just sucks that now at this point having one of the biggest businesses you can have both on and off the floor, having a certified agent in Rich Paul, having a certified business partner in Maverick Carter that’s done so many great business [deals], that the title for young African-Americans is the word ‘posse.’ ”
James’ point was well-taken and delivered in a flood of national news and radio and TV discussion for over a week.
As for his own bigotry …
While some race-based news makes a flood, some makes puddles that quickly dry after brief exposure to light. Thus James’ recent reference to Jews and “Jewish money” (see: Goebbels, Joseph) while teamed with rapper 21 Savage (his songs include FNB, for “F–k N—a Bitches”), has been issued the standard double-standard look-away pass.
James’ non-apology apology — another of those contingency “If” numbers — was bereft of now-I-get-it contrition:
“Apologies, for sure, if I offended anyone. That’s not why I chose to share that lyric. I always [post lyrics]. That’s what I do. I ride in my car, I listen to great music, and that was the byproduct of it. So, I actually thought it was a compliment, and obviously it wasn’t through the lens of a lot of people. My apologies. It definitely was not the intent, obviously, to hurt anybody.”
Offended? As a Jew, I’m more offended by such a dismissive, no-hard-feelings alibi.As black America continues to be represented by race-hustling, media-empowered charlatans such as Louis Farrakhan (“Jews are bloodsuckers”) and wink-and-nod anti-Semite and selectively outraged Rev. Al Sharpton, and, lest we forget, Rev. Jesse “Hymie Town” Jackson, I often wonder what young blacks are taught about Jews.
Do they know that “Jewish money,” more than 100 years ago in NYC, was the white money that helped found the NAACP? That “Jewish money” has endowed urban hospitals that turn no one away? I wonder if they know that the preponderance of white blood shed by Civil Rights marchers in the 1960s was Jewish blood. Two Jewish Freedom Marchers were murdered in Mississippi. From martyrs to suckers.
Why are American blacks urged to resent Jews? For their prosperity? For their charity? For their centuries of refusal to be annihilated? For their emphasis on education and devotion to family?
Where was black leadership to condemn James or at least issue a mild scolding? But such conspicuously unfair play is knocking the liberal out of the right-headed.
James, days before his “Jewish money” post, demonstrated his preposterous historical ignorance by issuing that revolting, simple-minded and hideous analogy of the NFL with slavery:
“In the NFL they got a bunch of old white men owning teams and they got that slave mentality. And it’s like, ‘This is my team. You do what the f–k I tell y’all to do, or we get rid of y’all.’ ”
Can he be that lost? That’s the term of employment for all, the butcher, baker and candlestick maker.
To compare athletes making an average of $2.1 million for seasonal work to Antebellum whips-and-chains slaves is disgusting. NFL “slaves” have the one great freedom Southern slaves did not — the freedom to quit.
But, again, no big deal and James moves merrily along. He’s entitled as a basketball superstar and racial activist — even if he favors artists who sing “F–k N—ga Bitches.”
I wish he’d been there for that breakfast chat I had with a black woman who teaches in a Baltimore middle school. She was heartsick, powerless to prevent 12-year-old boys in her classes and on her watch from calling one another the N-word and denigrating 12-year-old girls in the vilest sexual gutter terms.She agonized about African-American culture stuck in reverse by choice and habit, “not by white people.”
In April, crotch-grabbing rapper Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, no one on that selection committee dared publicly recite his vulgar, women-degrading, N-worded lyrics. White high school kids are suspended for singing rap songs that win Grammy Awards.
But I’m coming from a bad spot. I was raised to weigh matters only as a matter of wrong or right, not black or white. You can’t attain equality with inequality. And my old man, Great Depression and World War II tough, taught me not to be pushed around, especially as a Jew.
In 2013, Riley Cooper, a white Eagles wide receiver, used the N-word. Ka-boom!
Philadelphia’s black mayor, Michael Nutter, although publicly embracing black, N-wording, women-trashing, profane rappers, demanded that the Eagles immediately fire Cooper.
That same year, the Phillies signed Delmon Young, a black player who had assaulted a man in Manhattan because Young thought he was a Jew.
Mayor Nutter must have been good with that; he didn’t say a word.
I could ignore it all, choose the path of least resistance and risk, silently pander to it. I could whistle while I work. But I wasn’t raised to ignore inequality.
Francesa’s Hurricanes blown away
While he remains the most gifted, all-knowing colossally wrong human on the planet, he’s the only one left who takes him seriously.
Last week, Mike Francesa didn’t merely tout Miami as a mere 3-point favorite over Wisconsin in the Pinstripe Bowl, he indicated that Miami, an improving team, was the best bet of his retirement-abridged year. And as if he’s never wrong.
“This one jumped off the page at me,” he said, “This is a terrible Wisconsin team … worst in 15 years.” (Source: @backaftathis)
Final score: Wisconsin 35, Miami 3. Off by just five touchdowns!
Here’s hoping that for 2019 he predicts grinding poverty for all of us!
Broken leg just a mere flesh wound
Reader Art Paradis figures that if Skins QB Alex Smith, out for the season with a horribly broken foot, played for the Pats, “Bill Belichick would have him listed as ‘probable.’ ”
Score Alert: In the Betty Crocker Bowl, Omega 3, Glutens zero.
“Giants’ Chronicles,” seen last week on MSG, presented a superb feature on Emlen Tunnell, in 1948 the first African-American signed by the Giants, a superb DB and kick returner, a standout college basketball player for Toledo and a torpedo-wounded World War II Coast Guardsman who in 1946 saved a drowning shipmate’s life.
Stat graphic of the week: On the first play in Ravens-Chargers, Philip Rivers was intercepted. NFL Network then informed us it was the game’s first turnover.
Welcome to 2019, sports fans, when not running to first base will be both optional and acceptable!