LeBron James is a big boy (to put it mildly!), who doesn’t need a white boy like me sticking up for him, but in this instance I feel obligated to join the crowd that, fortunately, is coming to his defense. LeBron is a great athlete and a positive role model for African American children, and I want to be on record as agreeing with everything he says about his brothers “taking a knee” and President Trump. While President Trump has once again shown himself to be a crude, obnoxious bully, LeBron has behaved like a civilized gentleman who has refused to sink to the President’s level.
Just think of it—we’re actually talking about SINKING to the level of the President of the United States! What happened to children looking up to the President as a role model? The man is so crude and vulgar that I have a hard time understanding how even his staunchest supporters can hold him up as a model for their children to emulate. But
let’s not fool ourselves, the President attacks LeBron James because he is black, and a substantial portion of his “base” doesn’t like black people or other people of color—anyone they consider to be part of “the other.” They don’t like black football players “taking the knee” because it represents defiance on the part of the ever-growing, increasingly dominant “other.”
But just as LeBron has defended football players’ exercising their freedom of speech as guaranteed by the 1 st Amendment, other athletes—and not just black athletes!—are coming to his defense. I applaud them for speaking out, and urge all Americans not to be intimidated by our ever-nastier President, who seemingly cares about nothing but feeding the fury of his base—his oh so BASE, base. As much as I want to empathize with the plight of the working people who constitute a good portion of the President’s deluded base, I’m sick and tired of how easily they’re manipulated. Talk about falling for the same old story of believing the “other” is your enemy!