USA Today tries to understand why what ought to be ordinary — success in America — has created a sensation in the media. After all, lots of players get recruited into the NBA without attracting this much attention. But Jeremy Lin’s story is different. The answer from the media is that the unusual attention arises from an obsession with race. You see, not every valued NBA up-and-comer hails from Taiwanese parents in San Francisco.
“There’s this idea that it’s OK to stereotype Asians — just don’t with African-Americans or Latinos because you’ll get in trouble and you’ll get an aggressive response,” Kang says. “But somehow it’s OK to do that to the Asian-American community …
Advertisement“You hear endless debates about: ‘How can this be happening? How can he be doing so well?’” Kang says.
But is it about racial obsession after all? And if so, whose racial obsession? Other factors are in play.
Why are people asking “how he can be doing so well,” as if he were a monkey playing Chopin, as if he’d broken every rule in the book? To be sure, he has. Apart from being the wrong race, Jeremy Lin graduated from Harvard and is Christian — yes, a Christian — to boot, and you would suppose a man laboring under those handicaps would be almost as bad as a Mormon.
But what if those “rules” were wrong?
After all, most of Lin’s lifestyle attributes are — or were — predictors of success in former times. Back in the day, people would say, “no wonder he’s doing so well” — and not express astonishment. There was a time when people actually cited a devotion to learning, the lessons from their parents, and a belief in transcendence as part of the reason for their triumphs. People talked about reading by firelight, walking six miles to school to a one-room schoolhouse, or sweeping floors to earn flying lessons as the path to fortune.
Some months ago, in the wake of all the media hype about so-called Asian values and Tiger-mother upbringing, one old gentleman remarked to me: “Why should the media think that sort of thing is Chinese? A few generations ago, those values were accepted as the way things ought to be. It is only recently that believing in these things has become suspect.”
Maybe the real reason for the media’s discomfort is that Lin’s story uncomfortably suggests that these things still matter. The deep secret is that those attributes are still pluses, not minuses that afflict only the uncool and bigoted few.
To be sure, there are other persons who may have no families to speak of, who never went to school and may never have heard of the either God or the Devil — and still succeeded in their own way. But maybe they succeeded in spite of these things and not because of them. Maybe all the role models the media loves to tout would have gone even further by breaking with the mold.
In the interview that follows, the host wonders whether Jeremy can teach his teammates to keep what money they will earn in the salad years. Indeed they should, but they shouldn’t have needed the man from Harvard to tell them that. Maybe the Lin brouhaha is not about race at all but the uncovering of the wrong narrative. His life accidentally sticks a pin into all of the stereotypes and shibboleths of a society which, after years of styling itself as post-bigoted, stands revealed as blindly bigoted after all, in a politically correct way.
Maybe the way to avoid surprises in the future is to declare war on hyphens, those grammatical articles which join all manner of meaningless modifiers to individuals in ways which typecast them for political and narrative purposes. And then it will finally be possible to refer to the “Asian-American-Harvard-Graduate-Christian-whateverwhateverwhatever-Jeremy Lin” as simply Jeremy Lin.
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Jeremy Lin damaged his career by playing for Harvard. He competed against second rate athletes. Lin severely hurt his development—and this is why he was ignored by NBA scouts. The now famous star’s skills after graduating from college were nothing to brag home about. Ivy League universities have much to offer a serious student—but not a pro basketball hopeful.
Jeremy Lin’s story is very important.
Football, Basketball and MLB fans are fed up with the drug hip-hop gangster culture of many Black athletes in these sports and they are turning off.
Jeremy Lin’s story is also important to the story of Taiwanese, Chinese, S Korean, Philippine and other Asian Christians.
Our foreign policy is now focused upon the Western Pacific and away from the ME.
Christian Civilization is fertile in Asia put ignored by the MSM.
This Civilization in Asia is growing and is the ally of freedom
Strange that an Asian-Australian blogger should do so well.
His career is UNDAMAGED because — he got in anyway.
Beyond that, playing an easier game saved his body.
One could weep for all of the college players that RUINED their bodies — hence their NBA careers — while playing tough games against top ranked opponents.
—–
You are correct that the typical NBA player is a terrible match at Harvard.
I’m sure Wretchard could propound on that — with authority.
Rodney Henderson @3,
That’s a bingo!
Yup, Wretchard’s got game.
Cheers,
L3
I don’t know that this Jeremy Lin vignette has any significance. The media thinks it does — because of race. Maybe it does. But I’m not convinced they have the right reason.
Why shouldn’t talented people do well at several things? Ok, there’s the fact that Harvard students actually have to study which may not be the case in other programs. So that’s a handicap. But it’s not impossible to be accomplished in more than one field. I remember the Fusco brothers back in the day, one of whom played a part in the “Miracle on Ice”. Of them too it was said, how can guys with brains play this game at a high level? Well when you think about it, shouldn’t the brains help?
Bright Hockey rink was filled with townies come to watch the Fuscos — for they were locals. Hockey dissolved the barrier between Town and Gown.
Certainly one my most enduring impressions of Harvard students was how different they were from the media portrayals. I felt stupid and clumsy in the presence of people many of whom were genuinely good, athletic, talented and brilliant. You would come across people who were climbing Mt Everest over the summer or on the US Olympic Team, or maybe they inventing a new chip in an era when people hadn’t even heard of chips. Sometimes they were doing both.
I would not have been surprised in the slightest to meet a Jeremy Lin. One of the real benefits, perhaps the only benefit of that institution, is that it can free you from your preconceptions of what limits you should labor under. Once you get over feeling stupid, you realize that there might be something to yourself as well, if only you tried as hard.
Some pick up the wrong lesson and turn it into vanity. Alas, too many of those go into politics. Others pick up the right lessons and learn not to fear failure so much as fear the unwilingness to try.
Recently I came across the River of Doubt, which tells the story of what Theodore Roosevelt did after the White House.
It’s hard to imagine people doing that today. It would be as if a former US President took off in an experimental spacecraft and went to Mars. He nearly died, and indeed his son believed his father’s time had come. That attitude, I think, represents what an Ivy League education ought to give you: an indomitable amateurism, a kind of duty to yourself and your nation; a Cross you have to carry — as opposed to the airs it often depicted giving those who don’t understand what the Right Stuff is.
Maybe it’s an attitude that’s been lost and perhaps the biggest damage that the modern cult of the elite has inflicted on American culture is to turn it into some kind of Third World class culture where certain endeavors are reserved only for the right people. Apparently Lin is the wong kind of guy. But why exactly, I don’t know.
Hence I don’t think Lin did anything out of the ordinary. Or maybe he did, but he shouldn’t think so, or lose his mojo.
It’s the novelty, like a female NASCAR driver or a black hockey player. We adore sports figures, and have no immunity whatsoever against a unique player with a great backstory – we’re hooked.
In response to a comment in the previous thread, yes I do listen to the dreaded dark overlord from Austin Mr. Jones now and then and George Noury of Coast to Coast AM too. I’m not sure what you meant about Mr. Jones wanting to lock me up like Big Sis Napolitano or dreaming of a totalitarian society. Brother Alex clearly has anger management issues and maybe his grand overarching conspiracy theory is wrong. So what? Any fool can see TSA groping kids and digging through grannies diapers would’ve been unthinkable just a generation ago, and a blood insult to the manhood of the Greatest Generation or the generation that fought in the Civil War (think of Wretchard’s comment about Filipinos having to bow to the Sons of Dai Nippon when they occupied Manila).
Any fool not sticking their head in the sand can see that when Congress authorizes 30,000 DOMESTIC drones in an FAA bill that those drones aren’t all for cave dwelling jihadis in Pakistan or to nab illegals at the Mexican border.
Agree with Alex on all things? Do I listen when Jones starts ranting about the Bildebergers trying to kill us with flouride? Or do I listen when Noury talks about the shadow people/aliens? Hell no!
I just happen to like a lot of the guests they have on and can listen to guys with wildly different ideological points of view — Greg Palast comes to mind as one example, I imagine he’ll be fired from the BBC anyday now since he’s turned his journalistic digging on Obama rather than ole’ Dubya. I admire Nigel Farage even if the UKIP may be a mixed bag. I like Max Keiser’s riffs even though he’s crazy and has picked up some of the French anti-Americanism. That’s the advantage of late night and web radio…Mr. Noury knows he doesn’t have to browbeat or rant to his audience, he trusts them to discriminate fact from fiction without him having to take to task the lady who sees extradimensional beings on her couch. In fact most of what Noury does is listening and letting his guests talk. How refreshing.
I’m sick and tired of hearing the daily RNC talking points from the likes of Sean Hannity, El Rushbo or Mark Levin. I feel dumber after listening to ten minutes of them. And I think Mark Levin whining that some radio station owner in Toledo, Ohio kicking him off his line up because of his incessant bogus attacks on the ‘racist’ Ron Paul constitutes ‘Stalinist tactics’ is pathetic.
It’s called a free market Mark Levin, deal with it. Paul’s been belittled, cut and censored so many times by the mainstream media and lost hundreds of votes being thrown out by his own party’s state bosses (Iowa and Maine both), and you’re whining because of one little station?
These mainstream Repubs can dish it out but they can’t take it, can they? Especially mainline Republicans who say convincing Democrats and young people to cross party lines and vote for you constitutes cheating. I guess Reagan was a cheater too by that definition, and a conspiracy theorist since he was an acknowledged John Birch Society newsletter subscriber for years, even probably after Buckley went after the Birchers.
P.S. Ledeen deleted my comment asking him whether he supported arming Muslim Brotherhood fighters in Syria. Some people can handle direct questions and dissent, while some clearly cower.
The Daily News (NY) has carefully avoided ANY mention of Lin’s devout Christianity. So have the TV news people. Excised, completely.
Hmm interestingly the two best experts in the field come down on the side of Oppy NOT being a spy.
http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2012/02/jro.html
11 February 2012
J. Robert Oppenheimer:
A Spy? No. But a Communist Once? Yes.
By John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
…………
Victor, the notion of Ledeen cowering at your approach is laughable.
11. Kirk Parker
“Victor, the notion of Ledeen cowering at your approach is laughable.”
Kirk that’s fine and dandy but the comment was there three hours ago and now it’s gone. So believe what you want. When was the last time Ledeen debated anybody anyway?
Talk about the wrong kind of guy (and his girlfriend), how about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? The labor force participation rate has precipitously declined since November 2006, when they were elected to majority status! http://tinyurl.com/6rxgkov
It was 66 % and is now about 63.5 %!
BOOYAH!!!!
What else would you expect from a Dad who can’t create a budget and a spendthrift wife?
I’ve heard, various places, that one of the reasons he went to Harvard was that he wasn’t aggressively recruited by any schools that are “Basketball Shops.” Duke, those places, where education is secondary to a good sports team. Supposedly, the reason this happened was NCAA rules that prohibit recruiters from watching too many games, something like that. The trick here is that Lin doesn’t do anything particularly dazzling on the court. No monster dunks or fancy dribbling, blinding no-look passes or impossibly long shots. Instead, he just plays smart, and runs a good game as a point guard. That’s the sort of thing you can’t see only watching a bit of a game, or whatever they’re allowed to do.
It turns out there’s a statistics wonk, a sort of nascent Bill James of basketball, who picked Lin out more than a year ago as a potential star. He looked at games Harvard played out of their division or conference or whatever it’s called, and predicted the guy would do well, based on his success in these games, and on statistics that he compiled in his years at Harvard. Right now this guy drives a Fed Ex truck in Bend Oregon. Wonder how long that’s going to stay the case.
There was an article by Jason Whitlock the other day contrasting Jeremy Lin with Tim Tebow. If you can get past the hate-whitey stuff, I think he makes some pretty good points.
http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/Unlike-Denver-Broncos-quarterback-Tim-Tebow-New-York-Knicks-point-guard-Jeremy-Lin-is-real-deal-021412
The fact that Lin is Asian really should not surprise anybody. I seem to recall that Yao Ming played a pretty mean game of B-ball.
Several years ago I was at a friends house. He had the TV on and the Suns were playing. I wasn’t watching the game, much, but I did notice this short white guy scoring and assisting a lot. I asked, “Who’s the short white guy?” I don’t know much about the NBA and was curious about the obvious anomaly on the court. I’m sure many of you know it was Steve Nash.
And I’m sure I am not the only one to notice the similarities between the two.
He is taking a black player’s job and only black players are allowed to be Christian. This is all messed up.
I’ll stick with hockey thanks. Personally I think black America would do better chasing MBA’s than the NBA, but then I want more of them to succeed, not just the biggest, strongest and fastest. I know, that makes me a racist.
Back in the Stone Age at Chicago I was a First Year playing Intramurals for my dorm. My weight was 138 lbs dripping wet and I was the Center. Facing me were guys who had played for Michigan Notre Dame and Ohio. They were in the Law School Medical School and Business School. They were all nice guys playing just because they liked the game. The 250 lb B-School student out of Michigan facing me said “Just fall down.” I fell down.
Chicago is a Division III school so no one is payed to play. Back then they did recruit some athletes using what were called Stagg Scholarships, named for Amos Alonzo Stagg, but there was no obligation for the recipients to join a team. They were genuine scholar-athletes recruited in the name of Diversity before that word became locked into a federally administered racial ghetto. The NCAA stopped that and forced the school to drop the scholarship program.
The extraordinary bigotry of many blacks at work, especially among the women, is marked by their conviction that the rules are simply different for them. They can say and do things that would get anybody else fired.
In the bad old days society was informally governed by fear. This started with children, the English even formalized this at one time by “Beating the Bounds,” and then social groups such as minorities and women were taught to internalize controls. This infantilized members of the repressed groups. The hope was that increasing liberty would increase their maturity and strengthen society. This may happen over generations but it is not a sure thing and destructive social attitudes have proliferated over the last 40 years. The institutions that helped mold character, schools religion and the military, have been attacked or infiltrated by the Left at the same time that the forces of law and convention have been marshaled against the informal controls.
Can anything good come out of Harvard? You betcha!!!
I’m reminded of Tebow … who’s mother was advised to abort him; who was the fourth in line to play on the field … then … boom!!!! Not only that, but the amount of Google hits on John 3:16 reached 90 million in a couple of days!!! That’s the impact only one Christian can have on society!!! I find it amazing … as amazing as Lin’s story. Young people are the ones that are taking us into the future … and both Lin and Tebow are a testament to everything that is right about the soul of America. Awesome!!
The shadow story here is the terrible, tragic decline of black culture in America. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the precipitous fall from the Duke, Nat, and Louis to the amusical carney barkers who pass for black musicians today. It’s not that the rest of our culture has held steady, but the antisocial preoccupations of many prominent blacks, particularly those in music and sports,is thick enough to cut with a knife.
I place blame for that on the takeover of the civil rights movement by the left, the reframing of the battle from one for human dignity to one for more stuff, most of which was possessed by whitey.
What that did was to rob the underclasses of their Christian roots, which seem to me to have largely replaced the African paganism that they must have brought with them as slaves. Kwanza — which admittedly no one seems to practice — was an overt effort to replace black Christianity with secular-humanist/leftist ritual.
The percentage of American blacks who now consider themselves to believe in God, let alone Christian, shocked me when I read it a couple of weeks back.
BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A-JAD Wants to talk! http://tinyurl.com/79zbs4f
This is what is known as getting to YES!
Okay, A-JAD step one is to call off the dogs in Syria. Stop killing innocent children. This is non-negotiable.
Unconditional obedience!
GOT IT?
This story would have been much more heart warming if Jeremy had suckled at the teat of a gruff transgendered inter-city school marm where he was discovered for his natural rhythm and ability to rhyme six words that end in “ity” whilst citing post-racial neo Marxist poetry. Oh well, no story here.
Victor – “Our foreign policy is now focused upon the Western Pacific and away from the ME.”
You mean your decrees here are finally being implemented? Congratulations! Now all we need is that 60bn in Saudi defense spending to eliminate our 16 trillion dollar deficit. Get working on that will you?
Jeremy Lin was the California High School Player of the year his senior year so he didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Why he wasn’t recruited is a mystery. He wanted to go to UCLA but didn’t get a look. I remember reading last year on a Laker message board someone touting him as a skilled guard when no one had heard of him. The only thing I can think of is group think. He isn’t black so its not possible he can play. Everyone knows the only successful Asian players are 7 footers……blah blah blah
What him and Tebow possess is confidence formed in loving homes and a relationship with God versus the product of single mothers and missing dads, hood culture and a corrupt amateur athletic system. There are black players that possess that same confidence because they aren’t straight out of Compton. Grant Hill and Tim Duncan and Dwight Howard come to mind or the amazing football player Cam Newton.
Most of the basketball players kids see are morally bankrupt/poor role models. AND yes, kids look to these people, whether the player likes it or not…
Perhaps Jeremy will show young people it is okay NOT to be a nasty foul mouthed uneducated bafoon in this world of sports.
…. OR n the case of Lamar odom…marry a nasty foul mouthed uneducated bafoon..
We hope Jeremy is playing well for many years to come, and not dazzled by the money and trappings…”despite being of asian heritage”..
We are still wondering why all the stereotyping of this player..astounded that someone with a little class, and not black, is playing the sport?
Lin has a good game and he’s productive. He can shoot. He keeps under control and keeps his dribble alive. Sometimes he gets caught in the air without an outlet, but that’s the cost of trying to make something happen.
There’s Lin hype, but so far it’s based on performance. In basketball, there’s no substitute for winning.
But Lin means something to a lot of people, even if they are not Chinese, as this Asian-American basketball blogger explains:
http://www.canishoopus.com/2012/2/12/2792879/more-than-just-regular-insanity
Ricky Rubio (still just 20 years old) is another example. A lot of writers were expecting him to fail because he doesn’t seem fast or tough enough. For sure, it turns out he’s not a clutch shooter. But the passing is remarkable and the floor leadership instinctive. He’s leading the league in steals because he’s always a thought or two ahead of the other team. Here’s an example of a how-he-do-that, behind-the-back fake pass and finish at the hoop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9U9S5wNVz8&feature=youtu.be
For both Lin and Rubio, the problem is being a rookie and running into the tired-legs long-season wall. It’s already happened to Ricky. Ricky nonetheless outplayed Lin when they played last week.
But the Knicks won. That’s what counts.
“Afro-Americans” in general are far and away the biggest racists in the country. Obama is the most racist president probably since Lincoln or possibly ever. Every action he takes oozes white hatred. And don’t forget that here at BC, it was Starling who was working behind the scenes to get Whiskey expelled.
Lin is obviously treading on Negro turf, hence the reaction. I am sure that they would love to get Lin expelled just as they have muzzled Pat Buchanon:
Well these racist Negroes have also conspired with the elites to prevent Ron Paul from having a shot at becoming the president. But it will be the coming riots that will show how low the “Afro-Americans” have sunk as a minority. I worry about my Mother living so close to Oakland.
@Viktor: Here is a great Alex Jones interview of James Rawles of the the survival blog. I can’t bear to listen to Rush or Levin any more, or any conservative talk radio for that matter, since they started their hatchet jobs on Ron Paul. I see now that the are merely part of the machine, like the Republican institutionals. I think they love to make controversy in the elections to drive up their ratings and benefit Clearchannel, which is partially owned by Bain Capital.
John McWhorter, Berkeley linguistics prof and political commentator, has pointed to opera as a competition that is ruthless in its leveling: you can sing or you can’t. You can learn the music and the languages or you can’t. Affirmative action doesn’t apply (well, not too much).
Morris Robinson, former Citadel football player and now Met Opera Star, will never get the publicity of Lebron James. I’m a basketball fan, but I’d rather watch Robinson sing the Sarastro role than watch Lebron in a game seven event.
http://www.morrisrobinson.com/
ConfederateH, …uh Lincoln was a racist? I assume you mean he was an anti-white racist. What exactly do you base that on, his dismantling of “the peculiar institution” known as slavery? I lived down South for a long time in Alabama and cringe at the League of the South, Stars and Bars waving un-reconstructed Confederates. You jokers will go a long way toward making the right a marginal regional movement with no appeal to blacks, Hispanics or youth. The Civil War ended 150 years ago. You need to let it go.
As for Starling and Whiskey. One was an astute commentator on the culture who couldn’t be pigeonholed into stereotypes. The other was a crank with dubious conclusions.
@27 ConfederateH
I have to call BS on Whiskey. Many people were sick of his blabber. Starling just pointed out one of many deeply offensive things he constantly pushed. It’s one thing to bring something offensive up as a discussion point, but to keep beating it day after day will kill any good conversation.
I still pop over to Whiskey’s place every once in a while – that is about as much of him as I can take.
Starling added value to this site. Wish he came around more often.
Mayweather is upset at Lin for the obvious reason, he correctly believes that there is only one ethnic group whose achievements, are to be praised to the sky. We now live in BRA, Black Run America. This is not where Black literally run America, but DWL (Disingenuous White Liberals) run this country strictly for the benefit of Blacks. As Cartman of South Park put it: “Blacks can do wrong.”
I recently read the comments thread at another blog, where young black women were discussing how much longer White America would have to be discriminated against via “Diversity programs” and Affirmative Action (which is naked anti-white racism) and the consensus was “oh at least another 200, maybe 300 years.” Get it, Whitey has to pay and play this affirmative action second class citizenship game for two or three more centuries! (Actually, the answer is Whitey has to pay forever.)
So of course Lin is to be criticized and castigated. There can be only one ethnic group who is the focus of all attention and veneration in Black Run America, and that group isn’t Asians.
Lin is a triple novelty – Harvard, Chinese, and a bench player suddenly producing.
For that matter make it quadruple: a Knicks player suddenly producing!
The NBA has been mildly boring this year.
As a long-time NBA/Lakers fan I watched the Lakers/Knicks to see the Linsanity. What I saw was a guy playing by the book, with no obvious great talent (though it takes some to throw in a three-pointer, much less a lay-up, under the bright lights, with 5 pros opposing). He ran around Fisher like Fisher was a park bench, but then, that’s not entirely unique. He got four feet of distance from his defender to shoot a three. When his teammates got to the hoop without the ball, he got them the ball, planned plays I assume. Also a couple of fumbles and turnovers, he’s not superhuman.
He reminds me a little of two players, Tim Tebow, who doesn’t appear to have great skills but ran his team record up – somehow! But I suspect Tebow is over now, see below. And Larry Bird, who was a big, ugly, slow, white guy – who somehow went by you and you never did figure out what happened. Bird was a great player year in and year out.
And maybe just a little – Michael Jordan, who only got better the more you shined the light on him. But Jordan had mad physical skills as well. Jordan was one of a kind, ready for a higher league. But I watched Lin, waiting for him to just miss easy shots under nothing but fan pressure, and that he did not do.
I doubt Lin’s game is up to, say, Chris Paul’s, but Chris Paul is one helluva great player. It’s mostly novelty. And the American media still hypes the Knicks because they are in New Yawk City (I can’t kick, the Lakers are number two in undeserved hype). Also, sometimes a player just is that missing element a team needs. Lin may be that. The Knicks have missed *leadership* for twenty years, arguable forty or so, I’d have to go check my timeline. Missed good coaching and good floor leaders (and followers).
Give it another week or two. It’s more true in baseball but true in all pro sports, once a player gets the spotlight he gets scouted, weaknesses pinpointed and exploited. If Lin can finish the year averaging twenty points *or* ten assists (or close on either or both), that will be an accomplishment, tho right now his stats are poor from sitting on the bench for 23 games.
Let’s see if Lin can keep it up for three or four years, get himself a major contract and live up to it. Then we’ll all know where we are.
21. maineman
The shadow story here is the terrible, tragic decline of black culture in America.
Good point. And there’s a second shadow story: the stereotyping of Asian-Americans into an intellectual ghetto, as was done with Jews in the past. And like Jews in the recent past, Asians are often discriminated against for college entry, because they’re “too smart” and “too academically agressive” for a “fair” society.
I fall for the stereotype as well, if only because I consider it a positive that Asian-Americans value education and scholarship. It also led me to be as surprised as anyone that a Chinese-American was doing well in the NBA, or was in the NBA at all.
Both Kornheiser and Wilbon are “sports liberals” – kissing the ring of Obama while disregarding as much of the opposite side of a situation as possible to make their arguments. Does Mayweather have a point? Sure he does. Bigoted, prejudiced or simply honest, his reflection on the matter certainly sums up the hype, as they rightly state, as much as Teebow’s hype provided increased ratings and sports commentary for a few months.
Point being, we’re a celeb-crazy society, it ain’t gonna change anytime soon, and anything “new under the sun” ain’t new, it’s just controversial. Brings to mind K. West’s behavior at the MTV Awards towards Taylor Swift… another punch drunk stab at someone else’s success.
It would be a great story no matter what his background was. The thing that fascinates people is that he was so ignored by the experts. Particularly in basketball, where virtually all the stars were high draft picks. It’s pretty hard to be an undiscovered talent in that sport.
Being Asian contributes, but it’s less important than being an overlooked underdog.
Jeremy Lin’s story is first and foremost the story of the underdog who finds success against all odds. That’s the kind of story America loves and supports. The only reason race could even be mentioned in any conversation about Lin is because of the rarity of seeing a man with Asian features in the NBA. That’s it. His ability and his success aren’t shocking because he’s of Asian descent, but because he came seemingly out of nowhere to reboot a floundering franchise. If he’d been black, white, hispanic, purple, or polka-dotted, the phenomenon would have been the same. It’s the media and the race-hustlers therein who are trying to make this a racial issue. It’s demeaning to Mr. Lin and dilutes his fantastic story.
It’s not the novelty, it’s the entitlement…and he’s not entitled.
How dare that Asian-American interlope in the realm that is the black man’s game?
Hey, maybe a few token whites, a few foreigners, even one from China (Yao Ming)…but dammit, do those Asians have to take everything away from blacks? Here in California, they’re seen by many as the minority group that’s displaced blacks in the university system (regardless of the fact that they’ve actually earned their admission placement through hard work). Next thing you know, Lin will buy a market in Watts, like the Koreans…
And then it will finally be possible to refer to the “Asian-American-Harvard-Graduate-Christian-whateverwhateverwhatever-Jeremy Lin” as simply Jeremy Lin.
My guess is that psych ops is busy ginning up new role models to keep the kids in line.
But the outlier profiles are always fun to watch. Man against the odds. Reminds me of the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team win. Thirty years later we’re on the brink of another religious war.
@30. JoeB
“I have to call BS on Whiskey. Many people were sick of his blabber. Starling just pointed out one of many deeply offensive things he constantly pushed. It’s one thing to bring something offensive up as a discussion point, but to keep beating it day after day will kill any good conversation.”
So you were offended and so was Starling. You poor, poor dears. So that means that you think that the right to not be offended trumps the right to free speech any day, I wonder if that might have something to do with the US’s current problems. This means that race, sexual orientation and gender trump free speech too. It was simply too much for you and Starling to ignore Whiskey’s posts, so you wanted him silenced, just as MSNBC has silenced Pat Buchannon for his “racist” and “antisemite” opinions and just as the media establishment has black listed Ron Paul in a fashion resembling something written by George Orwell.
The US is screwed most of all because even when those people smart enough can discern the truth, they are afraid to say it for fear of being persecuted. This applies from DHS all the way through “the foodstamp president” to Obamacare.
I just read how Albert Pujols wasn’t drafted until the 400th(+/-) pick, so in sports it’s easy to get overlooked, luck is a factor. But anyone that’s involved in high school sports and above knows that there is nearly overt racism against anyone that is not black. A black player is assumed to be good and has to be proven to be bad, the reverse is true for white/hispanic/asian players.
Well, the elitists who predominantly occupy the positions of power in the Government-Media-Education Complex make all sorts of erroneous assumptions about people who are not like them. John Kerry’s “stuck in Iraq” remark is but one of the more famous examples. The GMEC people seem to hold the notion that our military is filled with slackjawed Neanderthal killbots and products of too much inbreeding. Their more well-disposed view is just that our military people are po-folk “victims” of evil wingnut pols such as Chimpy McHitler.
This, despite statistical evidence that (A) the American military is not predominantly made up of the urban poor (avg annual income of the households recruits come from is $43k), and (B) members of the American military are better educated than the American civilian population (98% with high school diploma vs 75% genl population). Go into the officer corps and you will find advanced degrees galore … continuing education is part of the culture of the military (and, I believe, one of the criteria for career advancement, though currently serving military can please chime in and correct/clarify).
Here’s the thing. Astonishing excellence is all around us in America. Individual initiative (usu. inculcated in family structures where there is a strong emphasis on achievement and excellence) occurs in all sorts of people in all sorts of contexts. Every one of us on BC could probably list at least two, three, or five super-achievers they have met in their life whose efforts have vastly improved their lives and that of their families and communities, recognition of whose efforts rarely makes it past the level of the local news.
Why is this so (if in fact one agrees that it is so)? Why do dysfunction and victimhood seem to grab such a disproportionate amount of attention in the media? Why does the American public education system put wayyyyy more time, effort and resources into the NCLB mentality of hovering over and pushing along the intellectual laggards while the gifted and super-gifted wither on the vine out of boredom and neglect? Why, culturally, have we tipped the scales so outrageously out of balance that “compassion (for the weak)” is viewed as the Virtue of Virtues while “courage and fortitude” (y’know, the things most needed and most likely to overcome weakness) are shoved into the nether regions of the cultural attic, never to be seen or heard from again?
The answers are not mysterious and have been discussed on many past BC threads. “Mommy culture” vs “Daddy culture.” Big Govt likes a dependent populace. White guilt/affirmative action. Cultural Marxism. Hollywood’s obsession with nihilism and the death culture. The “narrow nozzle” of feeding Ivy League grads into the GME Complex. “I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon.” Etcetera etcetera etcetera.
Life is inherently complex. People are inherently complex. That is why government should be basic — the knowledge problem and all that. Life and people will always, ALWAYS, outrun the controllers’ efforts to control. Outrun in both constructive ways and destructive ways. By the time we are able to observe the light from that faraway celestial body somewhere across the universe, the originating object is already billions of years older, sometimes even extinct. By the time government is able to study, articulate, deliberate, coordinate, solicit graft for and ultimately legislate on a problem about which there was once the hue and cry “there oughtta be a law!” … well, you get the picture.
The amount of stuff that Joe Biden doesn’t know would fill the Grand Canyon. The amount of stuff that bogie wheel doesn’t know would also fill the Grand Canyon. The difference is, I’m not trying to run Joe Biden’s life and force him into paying me a handsome living for doing so.
#36-MWR, your absolutely right. We need more kids like Jeremy to hit the scene.
ConfederateH (39),
No, Whiskey was an ignorant (if intelligent) buffoon, who trotted out his One True Explanation no matter what the topic under discussion was. Such intellectual monism is not a sign of wisdom, it’s a sign of looking at the world through a tiny peephole. And as his net contribution to the discussion was quite negative, it was a great relief to see him go.
Baseball is a different matter, and the Pujols thing makes sense. Perhaps because it’s probably the hardest sport from a skill standpoint, picking winners is notoriously difficult. Seems to be easier with pitchers, since the skill set is smaller, but even there, surprises in both directions are more the norm than the exception.
Larry Bird, on the other hand, was seen so far in advance that Red drafted him when he was like 12 or something.
@43. Kirk Parker
“Whiskey was an ignorant (if intelligent) buffoon”
The point isn’t about Whiskey. It is about people putting a muzzle on other people (races) they don’t agree with, or in the case of Lin, politically racially preferred athletes trying to exclude non-politically racially preferred athletes. Think of it as being similar to an Asian American male competing with Michele Obama to get the $350K diversity awareness officer job at a hospital in Chicago. How un-PC.
Why don’t you just come out and say it: Non-PC thinking people like Whiskey should not be allowed to post at Belmont Club, otherwise PC thinking people like yourself might be offended. And only “afro-americans” should be allowed employment in the NBA and in diversity awareness departments. And in the DMV, the post office, the IRS, and all those other bloated and over-paying federal agencies where “afro-americans” occupy a proportion of jobs far exceeding their proportion in the general population.
I think you, Mr. Fernandez, and your ilk, are, again, missing the point. If you believe what you profess to believe, and write the same, perhaps you need to stop pointing out the wrong headedness of the people you are attempting to sight as those who need to be corrected and correct yourself and your associates. In other words, those who live in glass houses, blah, blah, blah . . .
If you want to correct (humbly and gently), you first need to clean your own house. Perhaps you need to start with the likes of your own race like La Raza.
It seems to me, you and your ilk have certain favorites that fit in with your world views on a very parochial level and you will not give up the causes that you feel more worthy (e.g., Asians can be kicked around and used as long as it fits in with your agenda). Hence the reason why you and your ilk, weather in writing or on the radio have and will continue to escalate what your circle calls the Asian question? While, at the same time, the bigotry towards Asians will continue (e.g., Papa Johns, Republican Al D’Amato, Republican Peter Hoekstra, etc.)
While demonizing those who do not go along with your parochial view, you yourself commit the same sins that you blame others of perpetrating. That is called hypocrisy. Congrats! you made it, you are just like them, those you profess you are better than. Racism is racism is racism. And if you do not want to be called a racist, you actually have to not be, well, a racist.
Until and unless you and your ilk start behaving (words AND deeds) like those you believe yourselves to be, you will have no credibility. Examples: your radio hosts stop using Asian slurs to get your point across, after all you all say “the ‘N’ word”, one of your radio hosts call all Chinese “the Chicomms” with impunity. Etc., etc., etc.
Look for the escalation of Asian bigotry to continue and they have the likes of you to thank. I believe that they would prefer that you and your ilk leave them out of your soft sell race war you are engaged in.
When Lin hit the game winning shot recently, there was not so much as a fist-pump. If instead he would do a Tebow, heads would explode.
This could be a stealth Christian offensive on sport.
The way that Jerremy Lin has trashed a truck load of stereotypes by doing what he always wanted to do and had the ability to do is a wonderful landmark event. At the end of an appointment my Doctor, an Asian Amreican told me his teen age sons were more jazzed by Lin’s sudden appearance than anything he’s ever seen. As Martha Stewart says, This is a good thing.
Re 46/Stephen:
Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle! The response to this one practically writes itself!
Oh, I can’t even watch.
If you want to correct (humbly and gently), you first need to clean your own house. Perhaps you need to start with the likes of your own race like La Raza.
See here’s the problem. I’m not Latino even though I’ve got a Latino last name. Though I suppose I could be Latino, even if I was born in Asia because I speak some Spanish, perhaps better than some people who actually identify as Latino.
For accidental reasons my exact position in the racial/cultural typology has been somewhat confusing. There may be more where that came from. Recently there was a news article saying that “interracial marriages were at an all time high” which suggests there are a lot of people who are now going to have to choose what they “are”. Am I dad’s or mom’s kind of people? But does even choosing resolve the question? Why should what you are be limited to what your parents “were”?
So here’s the thing and maybe asking this question is racist in and of itself. Can one go through life without taking a ticket? Can one actually refuse to state what one’s race is? Is it legitimate to ask who gives a damn whether Jeremy Lin is Chinese or not? He’s actually Taiwanese.
For accidental reasons again, I recently passed Taiwan and spent some time looking at the airport exhibits of their aboriginal people. Now the question of whether Taiwanese are actually “Chinese” is a matter of some dispute. In a Westphalian sense, Taiwan was Dutch before the Chinese invaded it in 1662.
But apparently race is not optional. Not in America nor in many other places, for you are right in this: racism is not an exclusive characteristic of the white or black races. It goes a little further than that. And the Pacific War was all about one kind of “Asian” killing another kind of “Asian”. Chinese vs Japanese, Korean vs Japanese, Filipino vs Japanese. Indian vs Japanese. You name it. They killed each other, and how.
The thing of it is, some people did it while thinking they were Americans. One of my classmates was the grandson of Jose Abad Santos, who was the Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court in 1941. He fled the bench in order to avoid being used by the Japanese, but was caught in Cebu Island, where he was offered a choice. Renounce the American flag and become the puppet President of the Philippines or die. He chose die.
He called his son and said before facing execution that “not everyone gets a chance to die for his country.” What country was that? And did he have to die for his country as an Asian, Latino, Black, or White?
I guess there are lots of people who can’t go through life unless they think in racial terms. And the balance are just going to have to go through life basically ignoring it. The twain shall not want to meet.
I’ve read the comments, and unless I missed it no one has pointed out the essential point behind the Lin story, and that is that he plays for the Knicks. If he played for the Charlotte Bobcats we would never have heard of him. Is Mayweather a racist for dumping his beautiful white model wife for another beautiful white model? Some black women would say he was. A few years ago a black woman wrote a book called Talking Black But Sleeping White, about the incredible number of black civil rights leaders and politicians who married white women, an act she described as racism and an insult to black women. Is Mayweather alone among black athletes? No. Is talking black and sleeping white racism? No, but it is hypocrisy.
Stephen/46:
N00b much?
Really, your post gave me the best laugh I’ve had in weeks.
Please kindly visit the top of the BC page and take a look at Wretchard’s picture, then click on the link to his bio.
Hint hint: He was not a Chicano Studies major.
You are 100x funnier than that ABC show “Work It.” Maybe you should consider writing sitcoms?
STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Per the Washington Post http://tinyurl.com/7n37yvk
“Putin Allies Sharpen Attacks Ahead of Election”
NAH! That can’t be true, the future MSNBC Olympic colorcaster for the Sochi Games was out trying to make the Russian bobsled team. I read it on the Internet!!!
Our lincredible God works in mysterious ways, a spin move in the lane, a 3 at the buzzer, a scramble for 6, a cat with a blog.
51. wretchard
I’m sure you have mixed emotions on having to put a fringe bigot in their place, but that was beautiful.
Jeremy Lin is nice. It’s that simple. The poster who said this relates to the degraded black culture was right. What Lin is not is a black gangsta athlete. Black gangsta athletes are so much the rule and nice guy Lin who fans CAN RELATE TO is so much the exception and that’s what makes this story so big: the sheer relief of being FINALLY allowed to root for someone we can identify with.
But apparently race is not optional.
AFAIK it’s still “Spanish/Hispanic surname” in the US, not country of origin, so wretchard the cat I suppose gets to go to the front of the line, along with all his ilk. My neighbors have a Spanish name, and actually I haven’t the foggiest idea of their origin but I doubt it involves Latin America, and from appearances for that matter I doubt they speak any Spanish, and wonder if any of their parents did. I don’t have the foggiest idea who their ilk are, either.
I can’t even figure out what the “ilk” comment is about, other than maybe mentioning Lin’s race is necessarily racist. What the heck kind of a word is “ilk” anyway?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ilk
Definition of ILK
chiefly Scottish
: same —used with that especially in the names of landed families
Origin of ILK
Middle English, from Old English ilca, from *i- that, the same (akin to Gothic is he, Latin, he, that) + *lik- form (whence Old English līc body) — more at iterate, like
First Known Use: before 12th century
Rhymes with ILK
bilk, milch, milk, silk
Learn More About ILK
Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for “ilk”
Spanish-English Dictionary: Translation of “ilk”
Browse
Next Word in the Dictionary: ilka
Previous Word in the Dictionary: ilium
OK wretchard, you and your ilk’s ilka ilium should keep it in the silk kilt, and don’t milk it or bilk it. Whatever it is.
–
w @ 52: …and unless I missed it…
I and my ilk mentioned it above.
I can’t help thinking that the bloom will be off of Mr. Lin’s rose as soon as he has an off game. Still, I hope he has a good career.
Naked machismo drives the racial/ethnic bonfires, the psychology of individual ‘sovereignty’ being intimately related to self-identification as a proud —-. We will move beyond it, I am sure, but not for awhile. In the meantime:
“The End of White America?” – Pat Buchanan
Rick Santorum argues that the Supreme Court erred when it ruled in 1965 that Americans have a right to privacy that includes the use of contraceptives.
Cultural Warriors or Cultural Anachronisms?
Reminds me of the Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, too much of the argument being that Behavior A “leads to” (contributes, enables, creates the conditions favorable to, etc etc etc) Behavior B, which harms not just the individual, who may or may not care, but, more importantly, the collective, in ways that are generally financially punitive. It is not surprising that the cultural and religious sparks are starting with health care. Enforcing cultural and religious norms/behavior through the auspices of The State is a Old Problem.
Funny though that the race police are such knee jerks. Shows how shallow they skim through the diaspora that they presume to enlighten. The thin veil is falling everywhere, the clownish ejaculations of the crusading oaf.
ConfederateH,
Why in the world should I put any effort into saying things, when I have you to put words into my mouth for me? Your insinuation that any of us here are PC is ridiculous; the reason I was glad to see Whiskey go had nothing to do with PC. Rather, and unlike Subotai and Habu and any number of just-as-un-PC commenters here, he tried to turn every conversion into being about his private hobbyhorse. What a waste of everyone’s precious time and attention.
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!
As previously reported Putin’s henchmen want to know where’s ours?
Quoting from the Washington Post story linked above
“An American bankroll helps explain to the wider Russian public why Putin opponents are filling the streets, says Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“That’s Mr. Putin’s opinion,” he said, “and that is accompanied by a whole choir of the media who are usually very close to the Kremlin and who get the tune and develop it into a whole melody. This is understandable. What is less understandable is what happens next.”
The tactic may not be so useful this spring when both the G8 and NATO meet in Chicago and Putin as president should meet with Obama.
“What does he tell Mr. Obama in May?” Kremenyuk said. “This is a case when the immediate goal overshadows the longer-term perspective”. ”
What does Putin tell Obama? Hey Dude, you’re such a loser. I got an Olympic Games and all you got was nada!
Na-Na-Na-Nah Na-Na-Na-Nah Hey Hey Goodbye!
Recently some commenters have written expressing a reluctance to participate further because of Viktor, Matt and ConfederateH’s comments. It is just a fact that some drive others out.
Ultimately, I have the responsibility for maintaining an attractive comments section and have noticed the growth of this development, which is evident in some of the responses.
It seems to me there are two ways forward. The first and fairest step, I think, is to bring it out in the open in the hope of voluntary restraint. If one is aware that one is giving offense, then a little less frequency and a little less stridency may effect the cure.
The other is continue until the participation of some means the loss of others and to make the choices that are forced on one at that point. So let’s go step one first and see how it goes.
Josh @ 58:
I’m glad you had fun with the ILK explosion. I was going to comment on it, too, but am about to dash out the door, so, no time.
But if ever there were a word that cried out for Walt to versify it, it would be ILK.
Walt!!! Where are you when we need you, buddy??? Do I need to dial the Walt Phone? Shine a great big Walt Symbol into the night sky?
WS @ 60:
Beware the MSM’s Pravda-like spin on the Santorum birth control story. Santorum’s remark was in the context federal overreach & states’ rights. IOW, a question of constitutionally enumerated powers. The media is spinning & distorting it into Rick Santorum of the Spanish Inquisition.
I agree that there *is* a cultural angle on birth control and sexual behavior (a big frackin’ one), and that we *should* have a conversation on it. But as a CULTURE.
Get. The. Federal. Government. Out. Of. Cultural. Matters.
Wretchard @ 64:
Managing a blog comments section cannot be easy but you have about as invisible a hand as I have ever seen from a blog administrator. I mean that as a compliment BTW.
My chief gripe with some of the posters whose names have been mentioned above is not about their politics or their POV per se but the monotony of commentary. When it gets so you can do a drinking game to every post from a particular commenter (Take a shot when they bring up ____ !), that’s a sign of a bore. Or a boor. Or both.
Anyway, that is the point at which someone’s comments are detracting from a blog more than they are adding.
It’s a style criticism more than it is a content criticism. But on the issue of being a boring boor (boorish bore?), style is everything.
Here’s a hint: If YOU are the pariah at the dinner party, the host has every right to politely show you the door.
In California political correctness decrees that Filipinos are “Pacific Islanders” on the check boxes. Sure they are, they live on islands in the Pacific Ocean and are related to their Indonesian neighbors and more distantly to Samoans, Tongans and Hawaiians among others. However, the real purpose is to mast or ignore that are also as Hispanic as Latin Americans and keep them from getting special placements at colleges and other institutions. When I was in the Navy many years ago I rode a local bus from Subic Bay to Manila. When we pulled into San Fernando de Pampanga two of my shipmates from New York looked out at the Plaza of this small city and one said, “I can’t believe it, this town looks just like my Dad’s hometown in Puerto Rico.” Yeah. Funny about how that happened, it only took the same 500 years on both islands. In Manila and Havana and Miami the national dish of Cuba and the Philippines is called Lechon, roast sucking pig.
bogie (65),
I’m fine with that, as long as you mean from both directions–i.e. enforcing an absence of local cultural standards isn’t Staying Out Of It.
For #4 blert,
The “lack of rough competition” theory may also shows why prospective NFL running backs should never stay all four years at college. Barry Sanders only played his freshman and junior seasons (in between Thurman Thomas at OK State). Walter Payton was fortunate that the SEC was integrating during his Jackson State years- he probably was getting spared an extra 20 pounds of muscle on each hit he took because the big studs were trailblazing in Baton Rouge, Oxford, Tuscaloosa and Athens and no longer stuck to the HBCUs.
“I think, is to bring it out in the open in the hope of voluntary restraint. If one is aware that one is giving offense, then a little less frequency and a little less stridency may effect the cure.”
This following this comment:
“But apparently race is not optional. Not in America nor in many other places, for you are right in this: racism is not an exclusive characteristic of the white or black races. It goes a little further than that. And the Pacific War was all about one kind of “Asian” killing another kind of “Asian”…”
leaves me confused. If you would prefer that I left because I “offend” someone, then please let me know and like Whiskey I will no longer post here. But I think that any “vigorous” defense of Ron Paul likely “offends” many who read your blog.
Here is Websters definition of “offend” in this sense:
b : the state of being insulted or morally outraged
So do you really think that we should all practice self censorship in order to avoid someone else’s “moral outrage”? “moral outrage” encompasses a vast spectrum. I’ll leave without qualm, but you might as well shut it down if you let these guys censor your blog.
Stephen, you are a complete nitwit buffoon.
You obviously haven’t read Wretchard much. You are exactly the kind of person that gives anyone who opposes the Left’s agenda a bad name.
Be gone. Please. Or radically reconsider what you wrote and apologize.
There is such a thing as manners. When it is likely that one is giving offense the usual course is to make some changes if you want to stay. It’s not a good or bad thing. When I tootling around with Muslim Joloanos, they all knew I was not a Muslim nor had any intention of being one, but it would have been bad form to keep mentioning the defects of Mohammed in their company.
This is not hypocrisy, just a life skill. People will stand disagreement, but it takes some judgment to know how far to go in a given situation.
You may be assured that if I decided to call Mohammed names in the Muslim quarters of Jolo — to use an example — I should have been aware that I would eventually be asked if I might not prefer to visit another place.
One could also start one’s own blog and let it stand or fall on its own merits. But starting one’s own blog is hard and fraught with the possibility that no one will show up to read it. Colonizing the Belmont Club blog is, to be sure, much easier: an audience is ensured.
Mayweather talks a great game! Why doesn’t he put his money where his mouth is and go into the ring with that asia—Manny Pac?
Regarding Taiwanese vs. Chinese…
Lin’s maternal Grandmother was part of the 1948 refugee from mainland. From the so-call natives’ point of view (those Han Chinese that invaded Taiwan in 1600s), she’s not Taiwanese, thus her descendants are not Taiwanese. Nevermind that the genuine Taiwanese (the ones in the highland reservations who have more in common with Philippians) have mostly been exterminated by Han Chinese in the original wave of Chinese invasion.
So, from a pure Taiwan Independence Movement view, Jeremy Lin is not Taiwanese, since he has the wrong political lineage. Of course Taiwan want to claim him, China as well. But he was born in Los Angeles, so those of us in LA will want a piece of him.
bogie wheel/65
We speak in tones of softest silk
We’re whole and pure as mother’s milk
We’re the ilk
So slyly do we racists play
That none discern our evil way
That is until brave Steve today
Pointed out that we’re the ilk
I freely admit to the charge
And shout it to the world at large
That proudly we’re the ilk
It cannot be doubted that one of the reasons people frequenct the internet sites they do is because of the Cheers effect—they want to go where everybody knows their name. The quest for an accomodating atmosphere, a familiar face, a place where the expression of a certain viewpoint will elicit a dependable round of huzzahs, is too natural to need any justification, too much a part of who we are not to be yearned for.
But in my case it is a two-edged sword. I know of no other place on the internet where I might be more appreciated, or stand a better chance of connecting with others like me, than the Belmont Club; it is the water that keeps me coming back. Yet repeated experiences have taught me that even here I am not quite “one of the guys.” I’m used to that. It has been the story of my life. For one reason or another—I don’t know why, only God knows—I’ve had to fight my way in to anywhere I’ve ever wanted to be, and that may partially account for what I am now told are the off-putting elements of my style. That’s another reason why I like the Belmont Club: it is only here where such jagged currency might be honored as the coin of the realm. I would have thought that Our Esteemed Host would recognize something of himself in me, that my willingness to occasionally criticize him on his own turf was not ingratitude, but something born of the same struggle that propelled him to where he is today.
I have no interest in colonizing the blog, and that would not be possible for me to do in any case. Appearences to the contrary, I am not really a writer. I have a blue-collar job, I earn very little money, and every hour off I have is like gold. I can manage two or three posts a week at best, and these missives I write—often typed out in the wee hours of the morning—are true labors of love. If they appear critical, please remember that I wouldn’t waste my time criticizing someone I had no respect for, someone whose approval I was not anxious to earn and keep; that applies to Leo Linbeck III as well as Our Host. Also, I have never been loathe to offer explanations, clarifications—even apologies—when necessary.
That being said, I cannot but feel a bit of contempt for anybody who would take it upon themselves to complain about my presence here. I can easily point to evidence indicating that I have received far more offense at that hands of the Belmont commentariat than I have given, but I have conducted myself as a gentleman, rolling with the punches as they come. I will continue to act as a gentleman by departing in a graceful manner. If Our Host so wishes it, I will never darken his doorstep again.
Mr. Fernandez, your recognition and kind words have meant a lot to me. Please be assured of my prayers and well-wishes, and may we meet again in a better world.
I think if you check on it you will find that the aboriginal people of Taiwan and who still live there are not ethnic Chinese at all and may in fact be related to the people of the northern most part of Luzon. The old name Formosa for the island was given by the Portuguese, it means “beautiful.” Chinese people moved into Taiwan over the centuries, the largest recent move at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. I believe the Chinese name for the island Taiwan means “Big Island.” Japan occupied the island from the 1890′s until the end of WW II and left behind a love for baseball oddly enough and some items of Japanese cooking.
Mayweather’s remarks are racist. He wonders about the fuss over Lin, since black players play as well as he does all the time. I would ask Mr. Mayweather this. Why all the fuss over Barack Obama? White men have been doing the job for over 200 years.
W/51: what you said. The best kind of answer. Thanks.
Like Michael Burry, MD, Watson, Ph.D. & Crick, Ph.D., and others, Lin is the outlier who beats the domain experts at their own game. They didn’t have the credentials, according to the experts, to participate at the highest levels of the game but they managed to find a way.
The only surprise is that our institutional bias and standards-based systems haven’t done more damage protecting us all by protecting their own status.
It should happen more often…
Walt @ 75:
Muchas gracias! Virtually buying you a round of cyber-beer here.
Kirk @ 67:
I’m a social conservative so there’s much about our culture that I happen to think is disgraceful and even depraved. In particular I believe abortion is an abomination (in the Biblical sense) for which this country will (and already is, IMO) suffer grievous judgment.
At the same time I’m also an American citizen who wants as many Americans as possible to have the benefits of our heritage and our Constitution for as long as possible, and therefore who seeks to sustain a workable form of federal government that can actually, y’know, govern effectively (which would entail governing peacefully) a country in which there are deep, deep cultural schisms among the population.
The cultural schisms are NOT going away. It seems to me that virtually everything the Feds have done in the past 40 – 50 years to try to manage, control, and “decide” these cultural issues, has only served to further exacerbate the hostilities. One size does not fit all because, much as it breaks my heart to say it, we are no longer one nation under God.
My suggestion to push the cultural issues to the states and let the residents of each state decide is, I guess, my version of a Missouri Compromise, and it could be about as effective as the original scheme was (which is to say, it could be every bit the same epic fail) in averting a civilization-rending national spasm.
I dunno. I just don’t see anything being improved, let alone solved, by the federal government continuing to meddle in these matters. Anything they do is guaranteed to piss off a large percentage of the population.
And it’s not like the Feds even do well those few things they are *supposed* to be doing. They aren’t controlling the borders & protecting us from invasion. The Post Office is bankrupt. The fedgov itself is bankrupt. The currency is being inflated to worthlessness. Constitutional limits? “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Why would I want these people dictating the Christmas decorations in my little town in Pennsylvania when they can’t even keep American workers from being attacked by foreign terrorists and incinerated in their offices in the heart of NYC?
is Christian??? So is Michael Jordan and most players
Bogie (81),
I see we are pretty much on the same page.
Matt (76),
I for one hope you stick around, but as a more-or-less monarchist (feel free to fine-tune that characterization if it’s not actually what you’d call yourself) surely you are used to getting funny looks from time to time, no?
I’m blowing this up right now…
The fact that Jeremy Lin is a relatively small Asian is a complete red herring. The fact that he was living on a “couch” or that he is “Christian” are misdirections.
What we have here is a case of “unlimited assistance” chess.
Jeremy Lin grew up in Palo Alto, CA, notable because it is where Stanford University is located. Now hear me out…
Some of Jeremy’s friends from school ended up going to Stanford U. and we all know there are a lot of smart guys there. So some of them got together and decided to become an extemporaneous, outsourced coaching staff. They tried to sell the package to the Warriors, but they just wouldn’t believe it could work, so they said no and somehow the Knicks decided they could live with outsourced coaching. The package deployment required that team management allow the “other” players to be directed, either directly or indirectly by the team remote coaching (aka unlimited assist chess) So Jeremy Lin, necessarily has to act humble because he is a replaceable part of a system. He is sufficiently good in his own right to act in place of the “system” point guard. So I will again submit that the facts that he is 1)Asian 2)relatively compact 3)”living” from a “couch” 4)Chrisian …are all marketing gimicks.
p.s. Carmello Anthony’s groin “injury” is likely not real either.
good idea
Mr. Parker (83),
Thank you for your support; and yes, I am quite used to getting funny looks for monarchism and many other reasons as well. But I usually don’t wear my monarchism on my sleeve. In fact, in my non-internet life I scarcely have cause to even mention it. If I’ve been beating that drum a little hard lately, I suppose it was because I was concerned to articulate the basis of the perennial conservatism that I subscribe to, the understanding of which I think is very germain to the present crisis. I now note with some unease that I am being referred to as “Catholic Theocracy Guy.” I certainly don’t mind being associated with Catholic theocracy, but there is more to my position than that.
My recent posts have been almost embarrassingly replete with Conservative Revolutionary shorthand. Anybody who had read certain books or been formed by a certain traditon, would have seen right away what I was getting at, and I guess I had always assumed that I was speaking to a more like-minded audience. Now I see that I ought to explain things more carefully and gently. If Our Host gives me leave, I shall stay.
46 Stephen
My oh my…….. you certainly like dem ilks. I have one question. Am I one of W’s ilks (or is that ilk)? If not, why not? What are the qualifications to be one of W’s ilk (or is that ilks)? Please let me know. I certainly want to be PC!!!
To W:
I seem to remember that the title to this post (as published yesterday) was “The Wong Kind of Guy”. It is now “The Wrong Kind of Guy”. I had assumed that yesterday’s title was a deliberate satirical jab at the media. Did you have to bow to the PC police?
The media loves to tout narcisist chest pounders like TO, “KING” LeBron James and Ocho Cinco giving them their own reality shows and specials like THE DECISION so we can find out where the “KING” is going to take his “TALENTS”. ESPN loves to promote this garbage, and bad behavior like its normal mainstream behavior. Lebron James disrespects those super-stars like Julius Erving, Jerry West, Larry Bird, etc by ALLOWING the label THE KING to be affixed to him. As much as I hated the Celtics, as I was a 76er fan, Boston used to be the mecca of basketball, and now you have a thug in Kevin Garnett cheap shoting opposing players and the media remains silent.
Along comes Tim Tebow and Lin and they are treated as oddities, outsiders due to their high character, hard work and dedication. I think the country suffers from reverse discrimination, a lack of morals, ethics and character trumpted by the ESPNs of the world. Someone above mentioned DUKE as a basketball factory that does not consider academics, I totally disagree with that, ONLY atheletes with good grades and character play on DUKES basketball team, they draw the cream of the crop. Those with 700 on their college boards need not apply.
Matt-86: The tower of babel is not about language, per se. It’s about perspective and context.
AG-88: The era of the “KINGS” is over. Basketball is fundamentally a physical game and we now have computers to act as coaches. Coaches use every player on the team in the best way they can.
The powerful king method: http://youtu.be/L54exo8JTUs
The new model: http://youtu.be/0EZtXNIT5QQ
Well, it can’t be denied that players in the “King” James mold exist and are powerful. But no longer can they do it alone. It has been this way for ages, but with computers to set all the pics and motions, the “Team” approach is on the rise.
You see this is what I mean about ESPN, what the heck is wrong with them? Libs love to point fingers of racism and bigotry, but I really believe they are just projecting their own feelings. I HATE watching ESPN
ESPN has apologized for using a racial slur in the headline for a story about Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin.
The headline “Chink in the Armor” appeared on ESPN’s mobile website after New York lost to the New Orleans Hornets Friday night, the Associated Press reported
Reference: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/espn-apologizes-for-racial-slur-used-in-lin-basketball-headline/
One can’t help but get the feeling that some sports writers are simply having some fun at the expense of the boring game the NBA is today. I’m trying to think of Larry Byrd or Magic Johnson opening their mouths like Ali while flexing their muscles and thumping their chests after every frickin’ dunk and I can’t imagine it.
I have long been sick of the in-your-face lack of sportsmanship in the NBA that reflects a childishness I despise. I’m glad baseball has never really had to deal with it due to its strong sense of tradition and that the NFL and NCAA football rules committees have dealt with it.
I otherwise can’t really account for these stories about Lin but they’re definitely making the black community feel threatened, as if a 6th place finish at HOME in the World Championships wasn’t enough of a wake up call to concentrate on the game instead of innovations in stupid celebrations.
Whatever happened to quiet confidence and letting your actions speak for you?
Matt,
Fair-minded? With very few exceptions, yes.
But like-minded? I think you took a wrong turn somewhere, if you expected that. Even our proprietor, (perhaps) despite his Catholic background, writes eloquently about the value of the individual and his self-determination, of the value of freedom despite its discontents. Sometimes it’s hard to tell Wretchard from writers such as that lowest of low-church* Anglicans, C. S. Lewis, in this arena.
So if you want to want to argue that Christianity favors monarchy or aristocracy, rather than just being compatible with or tolerating such, go ahead, but know you’re going to be singing a solo the whole time.
———————-
*Yes of course I mean this as a compliment.
Some people concerned about abuse of the environment have popularized the word “un-sustainable,” and the Delusional Left has used that as a club to whack everybody about the head & shoulders.
Actually, all the insane crap being fobbed off on the world by the Communists, Marxists, Leftists and their Dem-bulb followers… IS UNSUSTAINABLE.
Simply, it ain’t possible to defy gravity, or any of the other physical “laws.”
Somewhere in the last half-century or so, Aliens, Devils, ComIntern, or some combination of all’em managed to hypnotize a large fraction of humanity to think that reality can be bullied into rolling over and accommodating what we humans really really want, if we really really want it badly enough.
Don’t want to feel guilt? Just change the words we use to define things, and – Hey! Presto! – a child in the womb is suddenly just “an undifferentiated bit of flesh” with no right to protection.
Just ignore all those troublesome issues like all the millions of female fetuses being aborted around the world in cultures that place more value on sons.
Ya say you wanna have the pleasure of un-protected sex any time any where in any orifice with any partner you cast your eyeball upon, without guilt, pregnancy, disease, or emotional turmoil?
All those inconvenient consequences just HAVE to be the result of government, Christians, and profit-obsessed Pharmaceutical companies willfully withholding solutions that should be easily achieved to protect us from all those bothers.
Don’t want people to keep polluting the world by burning coal, wood, and petroleum products, or ruining all the rivers and killing the fish and other living things with all those obscene hydroelectric dams, or poisoning the whole universe with evil NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS?
Just forbid drilling for oil, outlaw nuclear plants, close the coal mines and power plants, and build charging stations and require everyone to drive a PRIUS.
Don’t even think about just how the electrical power to keep’em running will be generated.
Look at jury awards in civil litigation over the last 50 years. A fifty-year-old aircraft crashes. The pilot had been drinking, but a lightbulb is found to have expired before its time. The jury awards millions in negligence damages to the widow, payable by the aircraft manufacturer. This kind of idiocy ENDED U.S. domestic civil aviation manufacture for over a decade.
Hey! I got a hangnail! Where’s MY Maserati?
Well, maybe yes, certainly.
Or maybe not.
Certainly.
But who cares? One thing is certain: Jeremy Lin can play. And he is exciting. And he plays team ball (in an age of, “What’s that, dad?”). And he brings out the best in his teammates.
And he plays his heart out.
And he’s making the best of his golden opportunity.
And he’s handling the pressure and the stardom wonderfully.
(And he’s well aware it may not last long.)
And it’s an absolutely terrific story (whether in NYC or Charlotte or wherever).
Indeed, one thing is certain….
May we all rejoice—all of us—in his accomplishments; and hope that when we are called upon (not if, when, and in whatever arena) that we will be able to perform as well.
File under: “And it’s Frazier bringing the ball upcourt, to Reed at the top of the key. DeBusscherrrrrrre!!! …YES!!! And he’s going to the line….”