Now, I have said before that I am not the biggest fan of LeBron James. Mostly, I take exception with his own seeming aggressive push to be recognized as the "GOAT" of basketball. He is undeniably great, but I am not sure that he is better than Kobe Bryant, and I am quite sure that he is not as great as either Michael Jordan or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
That said, I do admire his bravery in taking strong political stands, which he did some years ago during the BLM movement.
Well, he did it again. He criticized the media's fixation on the controversy involving tweets from NBA star Kyrie Irving, when he promoted a movie with anti-Semitic themes. And while I hardly think that LeBron is exactly exonerating Irving, he does point out how strange it is that black celebrities like Irving and Kanye West get strongly and seriously scrutinized, while white celebrities often do not receive nearly the same scrutiny.
Specifically, he pointed to a picture recently released that showed Jerry Jones present during a racial desegregation protest at Little Rock High School in Arkansas in 1957. Jones was only a teenager at the time, and it is not really clear whether he was a supporter of segregation or not, at least from the picture.
However, does LeBron not have a point? The media slammed Kyrie Irving - and justifiably so, as far as I am concerned - for the anti-Semitism controversy, and his apparent difficulty in even seriously apologizing for it. Yet here is a prominent and very publicly visible owner of one of the most iconic franchises in sports who outright was in attendance during a protest regarding one of the most controversial chapters in modern American history, and there have been no questions asked?
That kind of makes you wonder if, as LeBron is suggesting, there is not some double standard at play. Let's se if more serious scrutiny is applied towards Jones now.
LeBron James: A photo of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones attending a racial desegregation protest in 1957 has NBA star asking questions of media’s handling of race issues by Amy Woodyatt and Homero De la Fuente, CNN , Thu December 1, 2022:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/sport/lebron-james-jerry-jones-photo-intl-spt/index.html
LeBron James 'disappointed' by lack of questions about 1957 Jerry Jones photo, says media were 'quick to ask' about Kyrie Irving by Dave McMenamin, ESPN Staff Writer, December 1, 2022:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/35153937/lebron-james-faults-media-not-asking-1957-jerry-jones-photo
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