Don’t you just hate it when people who have nothing to do with politics, and who are painfully ignorant of current events, and of history in general, insert themselves into the public discourse?  Labron James of the L.A. Lakers is a recent example.   As a basketball player, Labron is a phenomenon.  He was so good as a high school player, that he didn’t even have to go to college, even for a year, to become the top NBA prospect.  In the NBA, he has excelled at a level which has made him the face of the sport.  So fully has Labron dominated his sport, that he has become known as King James, an appellation he uses as his Twitter handle.

The trouble is that Labron’s recent comments have proven that even a King is vulnerable to criticism.  It all started when Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey posted a seemingly innocuous tweet to the Root of All Evil, Twitter.  The tweet read, “Fight for Freedom.  Stand with Hong Kong.”  To anyone who’s been paying attention, the tweet referred to the recent protests in Hong Kong.  A little background.  In 1897, the Chinese government gave the British the right to govern Hong Kong for 100 years.  Hong Kong became a thriving commercial center, indeed the preeminent center for Asian capitalism.  In 1997, the Communist Chinese government regained control of Hong Kong, under an agreement that was supposed to protect the rights of Hong Kong’s 7 million residents, permitting them to continue their normal lives through 2047; the so-called One Country, Two Systems policy.  Only problem is that the Chinese Communists were lying, as communists always do.  They don’t intend to permit Hong Kong to do business as usual, nor are they content to permit the residents of Hong Kong to enjoy the personal freedoms to which they are accustomed, and which the Commies promised to respect.  This has caused massive protests in Hong Kong, with some 2 million people taking part.  The Hong Kong residents are fighting for their lives, against a regime that imprisons millions in concentration camps, brutalizes religious and ethnic minorities, harvests the organs of those labelled “criminals,” and mandates late term abortions.  Against this backdrop, you’d think that an American citizen’s suggestion that freedom is preferable to slavery would be of no moment, but think again.  Morey works for the NBA and the NBA does business in China, and had some of its teams in China playing exhibition games at the time Morey dared to express the sentiment upon which the United States of America was founded.   The Chinese went nuts.  Even though NBA Commissioner Silver made a mealy-mouthed apology to the Chinese, they attacked him.  By “brazenly endorsing Morey’s secessionist-supporting tweet,” Mr. Silver has unleashed “Chinese people’s anger at such displays of thoughtless prejudice.”  China’s state-run CCTV suspended broadcasts of preseason games in China, saying “any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech.”  Just for the record, the freedom to say only what the government approves of is NOT freedom of speech.  The NBA made Morey delete his tweet and apologize.  It seems the NBA makes lots of money in China broadcasting its games, and selling its merchandise, and the NBA has too many sneaker endorsement deals with shoe companies that manufacture and sell their shoes in China.   Enter Labron James, who makes some $36 million a year to stuff a ball in a hoop, and has endorsements, including one with Nike, reportedly worth a billion dollars to the King.  Labron jumped into the fray, on the side of the Communist Chinese.  “I don’t want to get in a word or sentence feud with Daryl Morey.  But I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand and he spoke.  So many people could have been harmed, not only physically or financially, but emotionally and spiritually.  Just be careful what we tweet, what we say and what we do.  We do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative things that come with that too.”  Sounds like Labron’s “freedom of speech” is surprisingly like what the Chinese government calls “freedom.”  This was a strange stance, coming as it does from a person who has spoken out on the subject of injustice, previously tweeting, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  So OK, as far as Labron’s concerned, black lives matter, but the lives of the millions living in Hong Kong don’t matter.  If Labron thought this through, and he obviously didn’t, he might have stayed out this fight.  People might be harmed physically?  So what, if a foreign government says, “Shut up or we’ll kill you” we should remain quiet?  “People might be harmed financially?”  There’s where Labron flirted with the truth.  There’s too much money to be made in China to permit an American citizen to enjoy the fruits of the First Amendment.  Let’s let Labron explain in his own words,  “We all talk about this freedom of speech.  Yes, we all do have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you’re not thinking about others, and you’re only thinking about yourself.”  Uh, Your Majesty, Daryl Morey was thinking about others.  He was thinking about the millions of oppressed people who exist under the yoke of Chinese tyranny.  Morey spoke out for the voiceless people of Hong Kong.  You spoke out to protect your own pocketbook.  I’d like to say, “You should have known better,” but you clearly don’t know.   As Clint Eastwood said as Inspector Harry Callahan in Magnum Force,  “A man’s GOT to know his limitations.”  You should limit yourself to stuffing a ball in a hoop.  You do that better than anyone else.  So please Labron, for the sake of the untold millions of truly oppressed people in China, shut up and dribble!  Otherwise, you’ll forfeit the title of King James, and henceforth will become Chairman Labron.