NBA Linsanity's Ridiculous Turn to Racial Hyper-Sensitivity
The NBA Linsanity surrounding New York Knicks' point guard Jeremy Lin has ridiculously turned into racial hyper-sensitivity.
Yesterday, the Linsanity meter reached another high, although it had nothing to do with Jeremy Lin's performance on the basketball court.
With Linsanity permeating every segment of society, it was only a matter of time that someone somewhere would be offended by all of Lin's media focus, and decry the creative, clever, or at times, cheesy expressions acknowledging this NBA season's top story.
And, with Linsanity appealing to sports loving fundamentalists, atheists, elitists, leftists, anarchists and even Boston Celtics alike, it was expected that some silly offense would be taken, an outcry staged, and blogs like mine would be written to challenge those wielding overly-eager trigger fingers of racial and cultural hyper-sensitivity.
During last night's game in New York, MSG innocently posted an image of Jeremy Lin's smiling face emerging from a fortune cookie with the accompanying thin white paper reading, "The Knicks' Good Fortune." Yes, that's all it took for cries of racism to echo throughout New York City and in every media outlet on the planet.
Although most sports fans who saw the gimmicky photo laughed it off as a clumsy attempt at humor, a few easily agitated dissidents immediately over-reacted and vehemently voiced their disdain for MSG's "racist portrayal of a Chinese American."
MSG, an acronym for Madison Square Garden, and not, ironically, for the Chinese food additive mono sodium glutamate, naively attempted to celebrate Lin's heritage and the good this Harvard educated rookie has brought to the Knicks' team during the current seven game winning streak.
No malice was intended. No racial spite was inferred. And no racial offense should have ever been taken.
What's crazy, or Linsane, is that some hyper-sensitive, acutely over-reactive ninny would make issue over MSG's amateurish attempt to recognize Lin's meteoric rise and universal popularity across all sports, all races, all socio-economic groups and any guys named Tom, Dick and Harry, as well as Jose, Mohammed and Wang.
By claiming that a picture of Jeremy Lin in a fortune cookie is racist, then so would saying that during the last seven games No. 17 has been hotter than extra spicy general Tso's chicken, or that his draining a dagger three pointer with one second left to beat the Raptors in Toronto earlier this week is because he's got rice-water in his veins. Come on, man!
So, allow me to get right Lin your face. Let's continue to celebrate each other's cultural differences without ever disparaging them.
Let's continue finding levity in what makes us unique without any poor intentions.
Now that the NFL season is over and sports fans have stopped Tebowing, let them all start Linning and enjoy this wonderful Linderella story in spite of some peoples' feeble attempts of humor.
By the way, by calling this is a Linderella story should not be interpreted as a homophobic slur and does not in any way insinuate that Jeremy Lin likes to dress up in high heeled shoes and wear glittery dresses and is gay.
Let's embrace our differences in the same way Linsanity has enraptured our hearts.
Straight talk. No static.
MIKE - aka Mike Raffone - thee ultimate talking head on sports!
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