The Cheek of this Motherf**er

The absolute cheek of this motherfucker.

The raw, high grain, undiluted, moonshine-fire bleached eyeballs rocket fuel-strength cheek of this grotesque court jester hatemonging motherfucker:

LeBron James, the basketball superstar-turned wonderful altruist, is, of course, building a school. Or, as Dustin more accurately put it:

[I]f you guys don’t know about this school already, it’s essentially one of the most thoughtful, generous, incredible acts of charity ever performed by a celebrity. LeBron has built a school for at-risk kids, a school with a food pantry, where all the kids get free bikes, where kids not only get free tuition to the school, but free tuition to college, and the parents get free job training. It’s an incredible school, and it’s going to change a lot of lives for the better.

Of course, the fact that citizens of the wealthiest nation in the world have to rely on the charity of a kind-hearted millionaire celebrity in order to get a decent start at life is a travesty of the highest order. It speaks volumes about the nature of a particular strand of American-flavoured capitalism that the person officially in charge of schooling is actively trying to destroy the infrastructure behind that schooling, while a poor kid who grew up to be one of the fortunate few disproportionately rewarded by an otherwise unforgiving, exploitative system is taking a stance on trying to rescue kids otherwise abandoned by it. That is not how the world should be.

Nevertheless, that’s how it is. And LeBron James did not build that system. He was just born into it, and with the help of some good fortune and an immense amount of hard work, he managed to rise through to one of the highest levels within it. He’s not at the top—that’d be the captains and owners of industry and their ilk—but he’s right up there, just one level lower. He came from nothing and ascended to the heavens. And you know what? A lot of people rise to LeBron’s level. Sports stars, actors, musicians. Sometimes they come from a similarly disadvantaged background. When you come from that kind of place, you remember. You remember what the struggle is like. How crushing it is to live underneath the feet of a system that does not care about you, and how every little bit helps.

But not all of those who remember act on it. LeBron does. It is far beyond the power of a single person, even one with the means that LeBron has, to enact the kind of wide, systemic change that is so desperately needed. But the man is doing something. Outside of the world of political policy, he’s actually doing a lot. And for that, he deserves all the praise in the world.

Of course, some are just hardwired to actively deny that praise. To downplay what LeBron is doing, to play at fallacious deflection, to engage in racist dog whistling, just to try and score cheap points in the hyper-polarised partisan circus that is American political theatre. In that theatre, and to someone like racist Bill O’Reilly’s racist fan base, there are code words. ‘Chicago’, ‘poor people’, ‘unprecedented violence’. Everyone knows what those things really mean.

It’s cynical, it’s racist, and it doesn’t even make any fucking sense!

Luckily, the good part of Twitter gets it.

Ah, yes. Chicago. The Winterfell of all black people according to old white conservative men trying to reframe literally ANY discussion of race inequalities in America to fit into their prejudices.

(And who could not give less of a shit about Chicago or gun violence.)

— Ben Philippe (@gohomeben) August 8, 2018

white privilege is building a career based on pontificating, but telling black people who are actually making a real difference that they must shut up unless they have first solved the world's problems

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) August 8, 2018

I don't know if he has any money left after all of his sexual harassment lawsuits

— 🇱🇷 Retweeter of pretty good things 🇱🇷 (@botchedflossing) August 7, 2018

Are you going to West Virginia to help with the opioids addition? Like, is Chicago just a buzz word for black people?

— Chloé S. Valdary 📚 (@cvaldary) August 8, 2018

You should open a help centre for victims of sexual harassment by revolting old men who should stay in their lane when commenting on underprivileged children being offered free tuition, uniforms, food & college tuition for grads by an icon in the sports world & Black community.

— Kim Barker 🐾 (@KimBrker) August 8, 2018

Oh, go fuck yourself, Bill.
Love,
Every Single Chicagoan

— megbon (@megbon) August 8, 2018

Why do old white men feel like they can talk down to eveybody and tell people what to do? What are you doing for Chicago? @KingJames is busy helping 1,000's of people right now!

— PrettyBoyBeats® (@prettyboybeats) August 7, 2018

How many schools could you have opened with the money you paid out in sexual harassment lawsuits?

— Raul Trujillo (@rauluga) August 8, 2018

The GOP has complete control of the government why aren't they doing anything about it.

— 🇺🇸Mike Bankson 🌎 US Navy Veteran (@mikebank_) August 8, 2018

The irony here being that one of these men is at least trying to fix problems, while the other one makes a living by perpetuating them.

— Frank Taylor (@brasky) August 8, 2018

Since when are you given a say in how he spends his money and where? Why don't YOU help the poor people in Chicago? You're geographically closer.

Oh that's right…you weren't REALLY talking about their financial situation, you were using "poor" as a proxy for…

— Mo'Kelly, Inc.🎙️ (@MrMokelly) August 8, 2018

you're so pathetic you're not even as interesting as an irredeemable Dickens character, you hateful, racist, sexual predator.

— Game of Thornes (@GeoffThorne) August 8, 2018