DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Lebron and Gissell Controversy ???

First I heard of this . Maybe it's just me but WTH is wrong with people ? Too much time on his hands and he can find nothing else to write about maybe.




Am I supposed to be mad about LeBron?by Jason Whitlock
Jason Whitlock brings his edgy and thought-provoking style to FOXSports.com. Columnist for the Kansas City Star, he has won the National Journalism Award for Commentary for "his ability to seamlessly integrate sports and social commentary and to challenge widely held assumptions along the racial divide."
Updated: March 26, 2008, 6:07 PM EST add this RSS blog email print Would someone please write a handbook? "What Will and Won't Black Folk Smooth the **** Off" would be an international bestseller.

What's your take?Got an opinion on the LeBron-Gisele Vogue cover or Jason Whitlock's column? The discussion is already raging. Join in. I'm black, and I'm pissed off most of the time, but I wouldn't leave home without the handbook. Not in these racist-ly confusing times. I can barely keep up with when I'm supposed to be disappointed as opposed to offended as opposed to being pissed smooth the **** off.

Right now I need to know where this LeBron James-Gisele Bundchen-Vogue-cover controversy falls. And just who am I supposed to be mad at, LeBron, the photographer, the editors at Vogue or Tom Brady?

Maybe they're all to blame. Maybe that's the point of this whole mess. Or maybe they're just as bewildered as I am.


Cover controversy?
Whitlock: What's the issue with LeBron?
LeBron-Gisele cover draws criticism
More on MSN: The shoot | The story
According to the allegations, King James looks like King Kong clutching Fay Wray on the latest cover of Vogue, and the image, according to potential handbook writers, "conjures up this idea of a dangerous black man."

Hmm, to LeBron and his handlers, he looks like LeBron clutching a pretty white woman on the latest cover of Vogue, and the image conjures up the idea that LeBron can race up court with a basketball and a supermodel.

I agree with LeBron. The photographer captured him exactly as he is. You know, when he covered his body in tatts years ago, mimicking a death-row inmate, LeBron invited people to jump to the conclusion that he's dangerous. Yeah, that's the way the image-is-everything game is played. Ink is a prison and gang thing. Don't act like you don't know the origin of the current fad.

Vogue put a mirror in our face, and we're complaining about the reflection. Half the black players in the NBA take the court each night in front of white audiences tatted from neck to toe like they're shooting a scene for Prison (Fast)Break.

When David Stern insisted on helping these players with their image by implementing a dress code, many of the players and their media groupies screamed racism. You see, showing up to work in a white T and iced-out (heavy jewelry) was their way of showing loyalty to their boys in the 'hood, a shout-out to the corner boys and girls.

And any time someone with common sense points out that athletes are making fools of themselves and feeding negative stereotypes, he or she is shouted down as a sellout, racist or out of touch.







Just look at how much heat the NFL takes for trying to stop Chad Johnson from bojangling. This is why a handbook to clear up the confusion is so necessary. When Johnson slaps in his gold teeth, dyes and cuts his hair into a blonde Mohawk, dances a jig in the end zone and makes life absolute hell on his black coach, that is fun and good for the game.

But when King James apes King Kong it is a terrible blow to the perception of black men.

Would we be having this discussion if LeBron struck the same pose on the cover of Ebony while holding Selita Ebanks? Think about it. And if we wouldn't be having the discussion, what does that say about us? Are we only bothered by negative images of black men when the primary/sole consumer of the image is white people?

Vogue ain't for us. Tyler Perry's new movie, Meet the Browns, was produced with us in mind. It had a great box-office debut, coming in at No. 2 with a take of more than $20 million. It also broke records for negative black stereotypes and simple-mindedness.

We ate it up, and I've yet to hear much of an outcry about a romantic comedy built around a single mama with three baby daddies, her loud-mouthed, weed-smoking, gun-toting Latino best girlfriend, a deadbeat daddy, a drunk sister and a deceased father who was a pimp-turned-preacher. I could go on. This list is endless.

Rather than reading and hearing universal condemnation of Tyler Perry, the drag-queen moviemaker is being hailed as a genius for recognizing what attracts us to the movie theatre.


I'm telling you we need a handbook. We need something athletes, entertainers, black and white folks can easily refer to when deciding how to react to the images we choose to project. The chapter on rap-music videos could be studied at major universities across the globe. I'd like for Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Exploitation Television, to pen that section when he comes off the Clinton campaign trail.

LeBron James is a kid, and his talents as a basketball player and absence of a father allowed him to "grow up" rather than be "raised." His stated goal is to be one of the richest men in the world. Like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, he is a child celebrity interested in increasing his fame and little else.

He's in very good and very deep company when it comes to being unconcerned with and unqualified for the job of representing black men in a positive light.

Hell, given our current state of confusion, I'm not sure Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could handle the job.

Jason Whitlock can be reached by email at Ballstate68@aol.com.

You're probably going to need a link.

Plus the first part of your post was confusing. I can't tell if that's your opinion, or part of the article, or something else.

One of the more interesting shows I've been watching lately is The Boondocks.

The show's basically a social commentary on most of these issues.

Whitlock speaks the truth, IMO.

I don't know., the whole thing to me is getting blown out of whack.. It's stupid really. people complaining that the picture on the cover perpetuates the thinking that all black men are preditors of young white women,,

To me it a concept that I thoiught we had grown out of, but I guess not..

Much ado about nothing if you ask me.

I love Jason Whitlock's social commentary in a number of articles. He's very intelligent and I haven't read one race related article by him that I've disagreed with. But as a wise man once said, common sense is the least common thing in the world.

He has one several years ago ... like 2003-ish, that was pretty bad. I'm trying to think of the topic, but I can't remember. I think he caught a lot of heat from it, and since than he's kind of been arguing the other way.

I think I kind of understand where some of the complaints are coming from.. its difficult to try to empathize with a different viewpoint, but I personally know im not objective enough to say whether or not its offensive.. because I just dont know. I think they could of used some of the pictures from inside the magazine for the cover and it would been alot nicer/classier. But hey, what do I know.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/7955740?MSNHPHMA

Sorry about that . They have not made an idiot proof operation ( cut and paste) that I can't mess up.

I could see where people are coming from. When I first saw the cover, I thought it resembled King Kong and Faye Wray...it also looked like Lebron James and Giselle Whatsherface!

I think this one is being blown up into something it really doesn't need to be.

But it is an indication that we're not as far along racially as we may have thought we were. There are still a lot of lingering wounds in the black community, and obviously some resentment in the white community.

We won't get anywhere without some dialogue and understanding.

Jena Six was bad...this is stupid

JC


I agree with everything.


You wouldn’t catch me dead in a Tyler Perry movie.

Movies like “White girls” and such make me sick.

Well, you may not be able to tell if it's offensive to others, but you should be able to say if your offended by it.

Personally, I'm not, Thus to me, it's no big deal.

For the life of me, I can't see why anyone else is offended either. But to each his own I guess..

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"conjures up this idea of a dangerous black man."

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Hell ya he's dangerous!!!! Have you seen that dude on the court?!?!



I honeslty didn't see this at all until it was pointed out on sports radio the other day... I went back and I can see where someone could take it like that... but was Kong really that bad?? Sure the guy died at the end of the movie, but what movie goer didn't fall in love with Kong...

maybe they are trying to paint the picture of king kong with the helpless blonde... but what's wrong with that?

king kong was larger than life, he was big time, so is lebron..

i think drawing up anything more than that is just searching...

you could have easily had done that picture with eli manning

Now that's a good idea jobenincasa.

Truthfully, I am not smart enough to figure this article out.

Then again........sometimes I am glad I'm simple.

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they should have had eli manning on the cover, it would have been 10 times as awesome

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Huh? Eli is one goofy looking dude.

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Excellent, EXCELLENT point. I read that and thought the same thing. Tats do not owe their origin to prisons. And tattoos are not just a black thing. That was just an extremely ignorant comment.

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If you read his original comment, he was referring to the origin of THE CURRENT FAD.. not of tattoos in general.

The current fad of covering yourself in tattoos, (or possibly it's a resurrected old fad, I don't know) but for decades only 2 kinds of people had tattoos, servicemen, who had a few smaller ones and prisoners who started getting a bunch of them........ So while tats themselves might date back a long long time, the concept of full sleeves and massive amounts of "body art" is pretty new.

Damn and here I thought it was art. I better go wash mine off. Anyone got some real good scrub brushes??

KING