OK, so maybe I was wrong. The officer, who is white, had shot to death a year-old black girl, who was wielding a knife at another girl. I said that James is basically a puppet for Nike and the NBA, who are using him for a social justice campaign to serve as a smokescreen for the human rights atrocities they profit off of in China. Where I was wrong was in what came next. I assumed that Nike and the NBA would be meeting frantically to figure out how to get James out of the mess he had created by going rogue from their carefully crafted plan.
I was ready for some big announcement. And what happened with Nike and the NBA? No statement. No explanation of a passionate, well-meaning mistake. They are just going to wait this thing out. James presumably wanted the officer to be convicted of murder, the way police officer Derek Chauvin was for killing George Floyd. But who knows for sure? James never bothered to explain. And it surely put a target on the officer. Just accountability for others.
Not for James. Not for Nike. Not for the NBA. I went to journalism school and have worked at newspapers across the country, mostly the Chicago Sun-Times. I believe in what the media can and should be doing. They are supposed to be here as a watchdog. Hold a mirror to society. Fourth branch of government. What happened to that? Sort of. The New York Times?
Washington Post? Chicago Tribune? What about ESPN. And nothing, no statement. The media are running stories about James taking down his tweet, and allowing him to dictate the narrative with his tweeted explanation of why he took it down. Gathering all the facts and educating does though! My anger still is here for what happened that lil girl. My sympathy for her family and may justice prevail. And the reporters are all OK with that?
He is just not prepared to do it on his own, and for the most part, he has let Nike do it as some sort of marketing campaign. At this point, the best sales pitch is apparently to just shut up, nothing.
