Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Of Bumper Stickers and Big Asses

I was not happy this morning. I awoke to yet another picture of LeBron James looking angrily triumphant. I want him to lose. I wanted to write that I hated Lebron, but that is too preposterous to write. I barely know him and I don’t live in Cleveland. I can’t write it, but I say it and sometimes I feel it. I have no reason to feel hatred towards this man I will never meet, apart from an ill conceived television special announcing his intention to leave his hometown team for Miami. I have no logical reason to feel the way I do, but I do anyway and with great relish. You may feel the same way about Barack Obama. You may see a bumper stickers sporting his picture that says “does this ass make my truck look big,” and either rush to the computer to order one or sit and pout wishing you owned a truck. The way you feel about Obama is almost like how I feel about LeBron, except of course that Barack Obama is not a small forward and politics is not the same as sports. Politicians deal with political problems. Political problems are real problems whose solutions or lack thereof can impact our lives deeply … more deeply than watching LeBron hold that trophy in a week or so ever could, although it might not feel like it at the time. Political problems, unlike sports rivalries, call for cooperation and compromise and not just within teams. The ignorance that is usually only mildly annoying when it appears in a sports fan talking about sports, is much more than annoying when it appears in a voter talking about politics. My blind hatred of LeBron is probably misguided, your blind hatred of Barack Obama is, to borrow your own catch phrase, asinine.

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