We all got played. Have you ever seen a good Lebron Raymone James (“LRJ”) shot and turned to a friend, and just said, “Witness, dude. Witness.” Have you called him the “Chosen One?” How about “King James”? (I prefer Viscount James, but I disgress.) Well, you got played. In politics, business, and law, masters of language work hard to control the language, because when you control the words people use, you limit the choices available to those people.
A quick example. Politicians love the term “Tax Relief” when they’re for tax cuts. Why? Because “relief” implies a malady which needs a cure. How could anyone be against curing the tax “ills” of America? Boom. The language does exist to oppose that. But if you re-frame the argument in terms of fiscal responsibility, and dispute the very use of the term, “relief” as loaded and avoiding the real issues inherent to taxation you can argue effectively by supplying a new language for the discourse. Advertising does it all the time by using trademarks. Product X has the new “SafeClean” system. 1) The company brags that no other product has it, which is crazy, because the “it” is a trademark, thus no one else can have it; and 2) people just accept that this product is actually “safe” because it has that word in the product description, which, technically doesn’t mean shit, it’s a name. But people don’t look beyond the product name and how it’s packaged and are fooled. My basketball point? LRJ and his people are exactly those kinds of masters of language and we’ve all been clowned.
Art by Andre Moore
Bron-Bron tattoos himself with all his monikers and his publicity people put them out there, as ubiquitous as air and as often appearing as a bad Craig Seger suit: every time. Then Nike puts it out there. Then Vitamin Water puts it out there. But what’s really unforgivable is that the national media does it. This should be no different than when the news media was excoriated for using the term “Maverick” to describe John McCain, when his camp was the one to invent the term, and which was largely misleading because he voted with President Bush 90% of the time. (Can you imagine if so-called objective pundits had said “Yes We Can” cover Obama’s campaign? It was his slogan, so to have incorporated that language into anything other than the description of that slogan would have been ridiculous.) My point here is that sportswriters should never use the terms “Witness,” “Chosen One,” or the like in their articles.
Nonetheless, we get stuff like this, allowing the “Chosen One” metaphor to get out of control:
It changes the way we think of him, makes you want to proclaim, “He is ‘The One,’” as when Neo came back to life and made the bullets stop in “The Matrix.” From now on, anything and everything seems possible with LeBron. – J.A. Adande, ESPN.
Now to be clear, no beef against J.A., I like his work. But really? Does this mean LRJ is going to start shooting all his shots from the opposite baseline just because he can? Don’t hold your breath. LRJ is no messiah, just a good baller. Maybe he should just start with free throws.
Here’s another one:
As if once wasn’t enough, the Orlando Magic were forced to watch LeBron James’ amazing buzzer-beater all day yesterday. The Magic were witnesses all right. Again. And again. And again. – AP Report, Boston Herald.
Seriously, do journalists work for Nike? It’s crazy. We need to think about this, seriously. The Big Nickname himself, Shaq, has more names than he knows what to do with, but they’re not nearly as self-promoting. The Big Aristotle: trying to show he’s a thinker, not just a dumb giant. It means something. The Big Cactus: just a joke on the former nickname. Dwayne Wade? Shaq called him Flash to his Superman. Okay, Superman’s a little self-involved, but it’s also not selling anything. How about Kobe? Black Mamba. First of all, everyone made fun of it before it finally stuck. Second, it’s supposed to be a metaphor. He strikes fast and he’s deadly. Fine.
But consider also that Lebron and his billionaire-minded camp manufactured his names before even playing a single NBA game! At least the guys above earned their names. To further prove my point, compare “Chosen One” to the “Great One” in hockey, Wayne Gretzky. Gretz won eight consecutive MVPs and had more assists than any other player had points when he retired (in hockey points are a combination of both goals and assists). Yet, again, LRJ had the audacity to call himself “great” before he even played a game? Fuck, he could’ve ended up being Darko, there was no way to know. The whole thing is ludicrous.
The worst part? LRJ doesn’t even encourage you to think. He’s just the “Chosen One.” The “King.” No metaphor. Just accept that he’s the shit straight up. And as opposed to the inclusiveness of Michael Jordan–who, incidentally, didn’t need all these names because he let his play talk for him–whose corporate slogan was “Be Like Mike,” and invited us all to dream, all to share in his greatness, LRJ doesn’t want you near him. Instead, you can just sit back and “Witness” his glory. Sorry. Other than in the context of linguistic discourse like this, or maybe just plain sarcasm, I won’t be using those phrases.
Lebron might score 50 tonight or hit another buzzer beater. But it won’t change the fact that he’s a self-aggrandizing, arrogant man-boy who truly believes the world is Lebron-centric. Fuck that. We all have a choice over the words we use. So don’t let someone else, anyone else, put those words in your mouth. And national media? Please, think a bit before you succumb to the lazy cliches that make you just another mouthpieces for LRJ’s self-perpetuating myth.
UPDATE 5/25/09: The Orlando Sentinel is on board!
Here’s the bottom line. We do studies and track data and make all these distinctions by race. But what is “race”? Why are Hispanics not Caucasians? They developed from Spaniards, like early Americans were French or American. Are people in Spain today not “white”? What even is “black”? Not that long ago, in a famous case here in Louisiana, a woman discovered she was legally black because she was 1/36 black. Not sure if that law is still on the books. But think of it, how “mixed” people are considered to belong to whatever race the minority distinction in their blood inheres. It’s more latent racism, that only “pure” members of the race count. Crazy.
