I’ve always hated ESPN for the same reason that I hate CNN: there’s not enough important news to merit constant, uninterrupted coverage. The over-saturation of bullshit into mainstream media is rapidly corroding American culture and replacing it with commercials and apathy. I don’t watch enough “news” talking-head programs to argue which slant CNN has, and frankly I don’t care. Every network has its own agenda and the fact that they try to hide it under a guise of “fair and balanced”* news broadcasting is an outright, bold-faced lie and a slap in the face to every American with an iota of common sense and intelligence. However, this is readily accepted because it is impossible to report on important news without giving at least some opinion and therefore pissing people off. As such, I’ll save ranting about that for another time.
Professional sports, however, are NOT important news. I say this as a die-hard sports fan, and a resident one of the few “lucky” cities that ESPN caters to with a personalized site (i.e. ESPNBoston.com). I’ve always hated ESPN because they’ve found a way to may professional athletics subjective. No sport should ever be subjective. It should be an athletic contest within the rules of the sport, and all that any no talent ass-clown like Stuart Scott should ever do is read off the scores, stats and narrate the highlights. That’s not what ESPN does. ESPN has always protected its favorite sons. Certain athletes are revered at ESPN and treated with an exceptional amount of privilege and biased coverage. A few names for that list: Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning**, and Lebron James.
My rant for today focuses on the self-proclaimed King, Lebron James.
“The Decision”, an hour long mutual masturbation session between Lebron and ESPN, proved that ESPN has absolutely no credibility and will do anything to make a dollar. They quite blatantly crossed the line between “covering a news-worthy event”*** and creating a television spectacle in order to make money and the expense of what little integrity and credibility they are supposed to have as a “news” outlet. But even if you choose to defend ESPN’s decision to create this spectacle around one of their chosen ones, something more recent is completely indefensible.
As reported on WaitingForNextYear and NBCSports’ Out of Bounds, ESPN abruptly pulled a story showcasing Lebron’s antics in Las Vegas following his signing with the heat. The article – of which there are excerpts below – shows Lebron James in his natural form: childish, immature, sexist, womanizing, opulent and disrespectful. Greek gods have acted with more maturity.
Five security guards are stationed around him, one at each corner of the table he’s about to sit at and another roving around with him, watching his every move. Anyone who takes two steps toward James is stopped and must have James’ approval to come closer.
The waiter bringing him his cup of green tea with a spoonful of honey and a dash of lemon juice makes the cut, as does the scantily clad brunette with a tattoo of a heart on her right shoulder.
She wants to take a picture with him. “I can’t right now,” says James. “Maybe later, upstairs, I’ll remember you’re the one with the tattoo.”
Upstairs. Where people can’t hear you scream and I can Roethlisberger you.
When trays of dessert plates are brought over, James gets up, preferring to start his party upstairs instead of indulging in the giant fortune cookies and chocolate cake. A security guard comes over and puts plastic wristbands on our wrists and escorts us through the back of the restaurant, up a flight of stairs in the bowels of the hotel and through a back entrance into the club. About a dozen security guards, moving their flash lights, direct us to a roped off section on the dance floor of Tao next to a couple of apparently nude women in a bathtub full of water and rose petals.
James, now wearing sunglasses in the dark club, immediately stands up on the couch and folds his arms high on his chest and nods his head. He smiles as he looks at the dozens of people crowded on the dance floor. Noticing him, they stop dancing and snap pictures as the DJ screams out, “LeBron James in the building!” and plays LMFAO’s “I’m in Miami.”
Carter, LeBron’s childhood friend and manager, begins dancing around James like Puff Daddy in a Notorious B.I.G video. A giant red crown-shaped cake is brought over to James while go-go dancers dressed in skimpy red and black outfits raise four lettered placards that spell out, “KING.” Carter grabs a bottle of Grey Goose and pours a quarter of it on the floor and raises it up before passing it off.
James’ infamous one-hour special, “The Decision,” was reportedly the brainchild of Carter, a 28-year-old who has never managed anyone outside of his friend James. This three-day party marathon in Vegas (which James is being paid six figures to host) is also Carter’s idea.
I guess they didn’t have 40s so Carter had to pour out cheap vodka like Grey Goose instead.
Bottle after bottle of “Ace of Spades” champagne is delivered to the table by a waiter flying down from above the dance floor like some overgrown Peter Pan on a wire. One time he’s dressed like a King, another time as Indiana Jones and another in a replica of James’ No. 6 Miami Heat jersey.
James, who can hardly see the flying figure through his tinted glasses, almost gets kicked in the head on the waiter’s last trip down. He looks at the girls around him and says, “I wish they’d have one of these girls with no panties do that instead of the guy.”
Toward the end of the night, Boston Celtics forward Glen Davis walks past James’ party and looks at the scene up and down several times like a painting in a museum, soaking in the images of the go-go dancers, the “King” sign and the costumed man delivering bottles of champagne.
Davis shakes his head and walks on.
The best part of this article is the shout-out to Glen “Big Baby” Davis. What’s amazing is that a guy who supposedly should understand and condone this type of behavior as a fellow young, male professional athlete with more money than he deserves, looks at this spectacle and actually shakes his head in disgust. It is completely defeats any possible defense of Lebron’s immaturity behind the guise of “he doesn’t know better” because he’s a young athlete who came into incredible wealth out of high school. Even his peers (say what you will about Davis’ game) find his behavior inexcusably decadent.
What I find inexcusable isn’t his partying. I love a good party. Who doesn’t? If I had that kind of money, hell yeah I’d bring all my friends along for the ride and waste money left, right and up the middle. My problem isn’t so much with Lebron’s extravagance as much as it is with his arrogance and hypocrisy.
What kind of man needs go-go dancers proclaiming him “King”? King of what? Douchebags? Cowards who can’t captain their own team to a title, so they have to run and hide on someone else’s team? But what’s worse than his arrogance is the same thing that makes Tiger Woods a detestable human being as well. And it has nothing to do with infidelity.
If you’re unfaithful to your wife/girlfriend, that’s your personal business and I don’t care. What I care about is that if you are an adulterous, womanizing asshole don’t parade yourself around on my television as a paragon of virtue, as a role model for kids, especially young males. That behavior is both irresponsible and despicable. If you truly believe there’s nothing wrong with your behavior, then don’t hide it. Don’t call your boys at ESPN to take down a story about you and then post some bullshit excuse that “it hadn’t gone through the editorial process yet.”
Like A-Rod’s steroids and Woods’ adultery, I revel in the destruction of these false icons. Because maybe it will cause people to WAKE THE FUCK UP and realize these aren’t good people, these aren’t role models, these aren’t people we should admire or give our money to, or that our kids hang posters of in their rooms and say “I wanna be like him when I grow up.”
My favorite professional athlete as a child was Mike Greenwell, left fielder for the Boston Red Sox. He played his entire career with one team, finished second in MVP voting behind a ‘roided-up Jose Canseco, wrestled alligators and was an all-around bad-ass who wasn’t afraid to crash into the Green Monster tracking a renegade fly ball. He’ll never be remembered as one of the best players, but he was what we like to call a “Dirt Dog.” A guy who busted his ass for love of the game and did everything to help his team win.
The more of these two-faced, sycophantic idols are exposed as frauds, the better we all will be.
Peace,
{VM}
PS. I was going to post a picture of Lebron’s ridiculous nightclub poster, but I’m sick of his face. So here’s a bad-ass picture of Mike “The Gator” Greenwell:
Greenwell's idea of a good time was to wrassle a gator, tape it's mouth shut, and leave it in Ellis Burke's locker. That's just bad-ass.
* I am fully aware that “fair and balanced” is FoxNews’ tag-line, not CNN’s. So save your comments calling we a right-wing conspirator.
** This is the only athlete I’ve named that you can argue I’m biased against. I find golf and celebrity adultery to be boring, so I have no reason to give a shit about Woods. And Lebron James has served as a minimal threat to my preferred basketball team in his entire career. Also, I don’t really like basketball either.
*** This was NOT a newsworthy event
