Monday, July 12, 2010

Evil Sycophantic Pinhead Nation

Lebron James prepares for his closeup on ESPN

I've seen a lot of sick shit in my life.  I've seen men and women act in an evil manner both from malice and obliviousness.  Doubtless I have seen many things much more sickening that what happened last Thursday on ESPN between 9 and 10 pm, but right now I'm having all sorts of trouble recalling what those things are, because Lebron James and his Decision have temporarily inflated the balloon in my brain that holds all memories involving cruelty and hatred, temporarily blocking me from accessing and processing anything other than the evil clown face Lebron has long worn in my head.

Not that this is about my hatred, mind you, although I don't expect too many people outside of NE Ohio to believe that (and probably not even all people inside NE Ohio, either).  No, this is about Lebron's hatred for his own home and hearth (and possibly for himself, as well).  But it's not about my hating anything, as hatred is something I reserve primarily for people I know personally.  Extreme emotions are not something I waste time bestowing on people I do not know, or who I know only through the twisted and distorted lens of the media.

Disgust, sure.  There is an emotion I can get behind.  But not hatred.

I never much liked Lebron James in the first place.  Having been permitted to get a quick and shaded glance behind Lebron's curtain a few years back, it was pretty obvious to me then that the guy was a major league dick.  So, having known (or at least strongly believed) that fact about him all along, my emotional attachment to the man was zero long before he took a shit on me and mine last Thursday.

At my age, passion for sports wanes with each passing day, so what bothered me most wasn't that I could see that Lebron was an asshole, but rather that I was rooting for that asshole.  I had pretty much tuned out sports many years ago for the very reason that I couldn't handle rooting for assholes any longer.  It just leeched all the fun out of what was never very much fun here in NE Ohio, anyway.

However, after having turned away from sports completely for a very long time, for a few years back at the beginning of this century I did let myself get tricked into showing interest again, thanks primarily to the skinny kid with the funny name who I watched grow up down the street from me.  Like Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, a high school kid named Lebron sucked me back in.  Watching he and his pound my alma mater into dust (100-23) in the State High School Tournament was a wonder to behold.  So, when the Cavs lucked out and got the frozen ping-pong ball of love in the NBA lottery, I was back like chicken fat.  All of sudden, I was 23 again and could not get enough of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  Back in the day, I had attended every game religiously, praying to the basketball gods for Mark Price's good health in my spare time.  And now I  was again front row and center as often as I could afford it.

But that really only lasted for a few years, as for most of the past half decade I have tried to root for the Cavaliers with a blind eye cast permanently towards what I had begun to perceive as the towering douche-nozzle in the middle of it all.  And ever since my short time wandering the halls of Lebronville two year ago, I didn't have to work that hard at keeping that blind eye in place, because my exposure to Lebron close up (or at least closer than most people manage to get) left me with such a bad taste that I didn't even bother following my hometown team this past season.  I didn't need to ignore Lebron any longer, because I was back to ignoring sports altogether.  The Cavaliers were on track to perhaps win the first championship in my lifetime this past season, but thanks to Lebron I no longer could be bothered to care.  I went from being a fan again to being a cautious observer again to being completely disinterested again all in the span of a few years.

So, I'm not talking about my hatred for Lebron James, which doesn't exist despite the many pejoratives I am using here to describe him (pejoratives, by the way, which have been affixed to him in my mind long before his Word Wide Tour of Me these past few weeks), but rather I am talking about the intense hatred Lebron James must feel towards his hometown and the people here who worshiped him.

You see, there is a lot of misconception out there that LBJ is getting ripped for leaving.  And while I'm sure many people here are motivated by that factor, the most important thing to my way of thinking isn't that Lebron left, it's that he went out of the his way to fuck over his hometown team and its fans long before he actually said fuck you in that abortion of a television show on ESPN.

What, you say?  Are you a slave owner?  Do you think you own Lebron James?

Hey, fuck you, Jesse Jackson.  If anyone's using Lebron James like a slave, it's your reprehensible ass.  Using this moment to glom on to LBJ in order to get your irrelevant tuchus back on television is disgusting.  Likening anything to slavery, let alone the anger people feel towards a 25 year old man on track to make a billion dollars, is just about as slimy as actually owning slaves.  If anyone is treating Lebron like a slave, it's a sleaze-bag preacher and has-been politician using him to get his name back in the lights.  Martin Luther King, my spiritual godfather, is spinning and tumbling in his grave right now.

So, why don't you go back to fucking whores and making more illegitimate children, Jesse?  Stay the fuck out of our business.  Because it seems like you and your penis have enough business of your own to keep you busy.

Excuse me, did I get off track?  It's just that seeing the Left's equivalent to George W. Bush weigh in on this subject was even more evil than the act that started this whole ball rolling in the first place.

Anyway, back to Lebron and his hatred for his home and its people.  By declining to tell the Cleveland Cavaliers that he had no interest in coming back, and by in fact lying to them and everyone else by indicating that he actually did have such a desire, he kept his hometown team from participating in free agency while they awaited his official announcement.  They couldn't spend any money on players because they had to save it for Lebron, and the feeling in the Cavs organization was that they had to wait it out, because if Lebron wasn't coming back he would tell us, right?  He wouldn't leave us hanging until it was too late for us to do anything to better our team, would he?

Fuck yeah he would.  

Knowing exactly what he was doing, Lebron James waited to announce his decision, declining to even privately inform his team until he knew for a fact that there were no other players left for the Cavaliers to sign.  Lebron waited and waited and waited to announce a decision that his new teammate, Chris Bosh, said he arrived at months ago.  Lebron waited and waited until he knew for certain that he had done the most damage to his hometown that he could.  For no particular reason (meaning for no reason other than spite and hatred) Lebron waited for every other major free agent to commit elsewhere, then he went on TV and said his fuck you's all around.

Fuck you, Cavaliers.  Now you cannot improve your team, and my defection will leave you in turmoil for years rather than months.  Fuck you, Cleveland fans.  Maybe when you see the shit I put your team in position to put out there on the court next season, after I sodomized them like a bull elephant, you will appreciate me as an even bigger God than you did previously.  Fuck you, Akron, my hometown.  I don't even know why I hate all of you after you embraced me and were vocal apologists for all my faults and deficiencies all these years, but I just have this deep down burning desire to hurt you.  Badly.  And now that I have done so on national television, it feels so good.

Lebron James didn't just leave NE Ohio; he reenacted Sherman's March on the way out of town.  Maybe that's why a career opportunist and barnacle extraordinaire like Jesse Jackson had slavery pop into his mind.

Oh, wait, Jesse Jackson always has slavery pop into his mind when he's not drinking and impregnating women he's not married to.  Nevermind.

People in NE Ohio are used to being left at the alter.  Lebron James leaving was something 8 out of 10 people (in my informal polls conducted repeatedly for the past decade) here have been preparing for since the day he played his first game for the Cavs against Sacramento.  It's tough to get mad about something you expected, prepared for, and are used to.

But no one expected him to actively seek to destroy the team he left before he split.  No one expected him to pull out his hog-leg and urinate all over us as he Hummered his way out of town.  Everyone thought he was going to leave for good and sound reasons, but that it would be a tough decision for him.  After all, we live here too, so we can fully understand the desire to move to Florida or New York. 

Are you fucking kidding me?  If I could get a job in Florida or New York or LA, I would so be the fuck out of here too.  I'd be gone, baby, gone.

But I'd doubt I'd set fire to my parents house on the way out of town.  I wouldn't shoot my neighbor's dog or deflower my best friend's teenage daughter with my last act.

Telling your team you are leaving is simply good manners.  Every other player in the world---even the scummy ones---have managed to do it over the years, if for no other reason than as a courtesy to all the working class people who made them rich.  Telling your team you are leaving is simply common decency.  Telling your team you are leaving is simply good business, as there is no reason to damage your image just to prevent them from beginning the process of moving on in a manner timely enough for them to do some good for themselves, and for the fans who spent the better part of a decade showering hosannas your way.

Not telling your team you are leaving, however, and then dragging out the leaving for just enough time that every other player they might hire to replace you is already employed, and then spending those weeks actively dropping hints that you actually are not leaving at all, so that they spend those weeks actively NOT pursuing other players    well, that's fucking evil.  That is calculated evil.  That is a desire to harm anyone and everyone with impunity, and with full and complete malice aforethought. 

It's the sickest thing I've ever seen in sports.  It's one of the most evil things I've ever seen one human being do to so many others in many years.  That Lebron was only hurting people's psyches and not their bodies (that he wasn't killing or maiming people, in other words) does not make the intentions behind his actions any less repulsive that any other act you can throw my way.  It just indicates that Lebron James is simply fortunate he is in a position of wealth and power which allows him to get his rocks off by merely hurting people emotionally.  Because if he weren't 6-9 and built like a brick shit house, then you can bet this deep seated psychological need to hurt people that he has would manifest itself in other, more physical ways.   It's not often you can bitch slap millions of people simply by appearing on TV for an hour.  Imagine if he couldn't get that kind of sociopathic jolly out of his system in that way.  Imagine if he couldn't crush people's spirits simply with his whims.

Lebron James is merely the winner of a genetic lottery that kept him from becoming something much more traditionally evil.  While in practice you can name serial killers and dictators who have committed much more heinous acts, in principal it is all the same.  Evil is simply evil.  It comes in all shapes and sizes, and all colors of the rainbow, but it is what is.  And the fact that one practitioner of evil finds himself in such a lucky and unique situation that he is not forced to commit violent criminal acts in order to satisfy his pathology just means he is fortunate, not less evil.

But now at least NE Ohio has a lot less of that evil within its borders, and now I can go back to cautiously following basketball again.  It hurts you now, NE Ohio, but it will be better in the long run.  Not being fooled into lionizing a sociopath for any longer than you have to is always, as Martha Stewart might say, a good thing.

3 comments:

  1. Kevin Not SmithJuly 12, 2010 2:43 PM

    Sing it, brother.

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  2. I don't blame him for leaving but I did not know he left in that manner. That is twisted.

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  3. I'm from Cleveland, and I'd leave if I could get a job somewhere else. But I wouldn't screw over my old employer the way Lebron did. You got that right on the money, Schmoker. I expected him to leave, but I never expected him to screw over the entire state when he did. The guy obviously has issues, or is just plain crazy.

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