Multi-Media Observer

A special USA-365 supplement by Mark Smith

07-13-2010

We are all media observers. We all watch, listen and read and we know what we like.

Media is a business designed to make money off the public by entertaining them. It often does not have redeeming value, logic or a moral base. But it isn't required to. I ask you to accept TV, newspaper, internet and radio as the creative, possibility and mistake-laden free form entities that they are.

Don't make too much of what is said, written or aired. It isn't about you, it's about them.

That also applies to anyone who dares to be a critic.

CROWN POINT (7-13-2010) I thought the joke of Stephen Strasburg being suggested for the Major League Baseball all-star team after six games of his rookie season and the two-faced story of Carlos Zambrano who had a mental breakdown and then claimed he planned it to motivate the team was bad enough. Then came the story of one LeBron James.

Other than the fact that he has a first name which is a last name and a last name which is a first name, I've always liked LeBron. I thought he was an egomaniac who believed that he was some form of Greek God, but most pro athletes act that way. LeBron is well-spoken and, until the Tiger Woods or John Edwards-style scandal surfaces, I think he's clean cut.

With that said, I'm glad I follow high school sports. I don't have any illusions about how most people don't tell the truth or say one thing and do another. In high school sports, there is always at least the fall-back morality position that you have children playing and teachers coaching.

But in pro sports you have social defectives like James, who showed some true colors last week when he left Cleveland to sign a free agent contract with teammates Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and Miami.

Whether you watch the NBA or not isn't relevant. LeBron has the right to go wherever he wants to go and sign for whatever he wants to sign for. The fact is that he's always spoken of loyalty and love for his home town and that he now bailed on them. Costing the town millions and saddening his hometown means nothing because his love of himself was bigger than his love of his place of birth. He isn't some kind of public enemy. He's just an enemy of the state. The state of Ohio. He's Okay with that. He'll probably never be forgiven by his home and that part has yet to truly dawn on him.

My problem is how he handled the entire 'Decision' situation. I don't know if it was money or ego or just some athletically-induced mental illness that prevented him from thinking though his choice. But here was a multi-millionaire so full of himself that he asked six teams to visit his hometown for the right to talk to him. The hometown he admits now that he knew two years earlier he was thinking about deserting.

And if that wasn't offensive enough, James was then so sickly self-important that he called ESPN and ordered the fake sports news channel to give him an hour of time. He then handpicked 'his boys'.

Sneaker sniffers like formerly serious journalist Jim Gray and Steppin Fetchit clowns like Stuart Scott and Michael Wilbon who would spend an hour patronizing the boy who would be king.

The badly produced ESPN suck-up hour was embarrassing to television. Everyone above the age of six who wanted to know knew what he was going to say 24 hours before the rambling, boring 75-minute James tribute even began. To fill gaps between the time James gave monotone non-answers to questioners speaking from their knees, the sports circus network brought on a parade of ex-players and paid media who talked about how big a deal this was and how it was so suspenseful. The ex-players were lying about how they truly felt, but like those GOP public officials who back British Petroleum, you say exactly what you are paid to say.

No one asked James why he was afraid to call the very upset owner of the Cleveland team that gave him his start and, at least, inform him of his decision.

No one asked James about why it was more important to compete for an NBA title (Miami only has six players under contract) than it was to become a lifelong curse word in his hometown area and the place where everybody loved him.

No one even suggested to James that he might have joined Bosh and Wade as a marketing ploy so his 'brand' name and their three-man ESPN-backed crusade would spawn marketing ideas that would soar world wide and make him the most money.

But above all, no one dared asked Lebron why he thought he was so great that he would even consider calling a nationwide news conference and asking for a prime-time tribute to himself and his decision. A show on which he would tell the world that the people in his hometown, that their support and their franchise and the man who gave him his start in pro ball, wasn't good enough for him. That the people who worked there, from the officials down to the parking attendants (who will suffer from him leaving) weren't good enough and could never be good enough for him. So he was leaving. And he wanted to emphasize on world wide TV to anyone and everyone that the number one reason why he left was that Cleveland and the Ohio area of his birth simply was not good enough for the ego King to do what he thought he had entitlement to do.

And no one asked James any of those question because LeBron paid ESPN. Paid them heavily. Forget the talk about how the proceeds from the LeBron love fest went to the local Boys and Girls Club. You do understand that ESPN made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the commercials that were adjacent to the hour?

ESPN made big money off LeBron's big head. So they paid the bills and gave Lebron free time and free access. It would be like 'Access Hollywood supplying Lindsey Lohan free cocaine so they could film her breakdown and rehab.

When asked on his 'Decision' hour about the Ohio people who idolized and supported him not understanding his actions, LeBron said basically that it's not all about them. It's all about him.

"I'm just going to continue to be great," he said.

Poor little fool. The Northwest Ohio area where LeBron was born and raised did a lot for him long before, as he said repeatedly he did "so much" for them. And let's take a look what HE did. Lebron says he did so much for Cleveland. He played basketball, got paid millions and got treated like a favorite son. Yeah, James had it tough. Now he bails on his hometown causing poor people in his area to lose jobs and businesses to suffer. He didn't think about that. But that's professional sports. Miami will benefit, but LeBron was born and raised in the area he just hurt.

This is what we have created with professional sports where we tell a guy that he is above the rest of us to the extent that his ego shell cannot be penetrated by anything human. The modern pro athlete rationalizes everything he does and why not? Networks like ESPN and so-called serious media suck up to him 24 hours a day because they can make a buck off pro sports fans, who are predominantly alcoholics and anger management class rejects.

I'm so glad I'm at the high school level. My team is my team whether they are good or not. The best kid on the team, the hardest working kid on the team (they are never the same person) and the worst kid on the team are all the same to me if they're willing to put the uniform on and act civil. It's not about them, or me, or the coaches. It's about the place where we all live. Our home.

Every place has its flaws, but it says something about you when you go out of you way to hurt people who love you and the place that spawned you. And announce it on national TV.

And it's disgraceful that ESPN, in effect, paid LeBron to masquerade as a very willing hostage to such a process. At my level, I rarely hear players talk about what they've done for their home town, how they have to go someplace else because their home and its people aren't good enough for the self-proclaimed greatness that is them.

And on the rare occasions that I do hear someone even try to say anything like that, I simply don't have to print it.