Yep, LeBron is out of his league

Aside to LeBron James:


The Akron area is grateful for your generosity in  so many important venues around here and respect your iconic involvement in youth programs.  However, upon seeing your presence in front of a blackboard  supporting  the Scarborough regime at the University of Akron, we must respectfully advise you that in this instance, you are out of your league.  The UA defenders say they had no hand in this photo, that it was spontaneous on your part.  Considering the self-inflicted  damage already done to the university's credibility, we will await a second opinion.  I doubt that if the UA Team were on the floor with the Cavs,  you would join it.  Even one of your immense athletic talent can't dribble  a brick.

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In the Plain Dealer's long profile of Beth Hansen, Gov. Kasich's presidential campaign manager, backed away from talking about  her husband David's 's scandalous effort to satisfy charter school political donors by hiding the lowest grades. His back-channel behavior led to his resignation from the Ohio Department of Education. According to Henry Gomez, the paper's political reporter,  "there are  subjects  [Beth] Hansen doesn't like to discuss".

She's better work up a stronger reason when the national media come a-calling.   The ugly issue will be around for some time, even though Kasich not unexpectedly is pleading ignorance of the mess. It is, after all,  a presidential campaign season.

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I've said many times that I'm hardly a math wizard.  But with all of the excitement over Donald Trump's poll numbers  in the 30s, I have to ask: with , say, 35 pct. approval among Republicans, what about the 65 pt. that don't approve.  Yet, it's also true that two thirds of those supporting Trump believe Obama, who isn't running, is a Muslim.  Go figure.

Johnny Football upstaged by LeBron Basketball

No sooner had people started to raise eyebrows about supernova Johnny Football's (a.k.a.Manziel} off-the-field revelries than along came LeBron Basketball (a.k.a. James) to upstage him in the media.   Unless you have been  engaged in a life-and-death personal emergency the past few days, you will know  that LeBron has decided to end his ties with the Miami Heat to pursue his claim as the NBA's greatest player for wherever it will take him - physically and financially..

For the moment at least,  the sports crowd, particularly in northern Ohio, may find less distracting  Johnny Football's' repeated weekend escapades that have shown him riding an inflated swan or swigging champagne from bottle to lips. As we've learned from our livelihood  in LeBron's hometown of Akron, there isn't much on the planet that will distract  the media from reporting his minute- by-minute existence.

Ever since he ceremoniously left the Cavaliers four years ago to take up with the Heat, LeBron has been the source of wistful yearning among the Cavs fans (even those who may have scorned him for leaving) that he would make a MacArthur-like return to bring an elusive championship to a Cleveland sports franchise.

Until  LeBron's  next move is determined, the scribes and broadcast commentators  will drench themselves in  speculation that could encourage the Plain Dealer to spread Terry Pluto over six full pages in a Sunday edition, building on the four that  his voluminous sports profundity was given recently.  (If you're looking for an excessive  first in urban journalism, you need look no farther.)

As for Johnny Football, he may have to ask what a guy has to do to match LeBron's celebrity.    For starters, he  might play his first minute in an actual NFL game.

An opening day disruption of a workaday world

The opening day of a new season is quite likely to be a fan's highest  moment of anticipation. No games lost so far. Only 30 pct of the players aching (or worse) from  injuries suffered during the exhibition games. All of the coaches with game faces that disguise their deepest fears that their franchise  quarterback will be flattened on his way to the sidelines by a vengeful linebacker.

Today's Plain Dealer  explained it all in a big front-page spread: "A magic day." A 7-member panel of the paper's sports experts  curated the fans' expectations by unanimously predicting a home-team victory over Miami, if only by a couple of points. Like the team, the writers began the day with perfect records.

The Beacon Journal had other ideas about what was newsworthiest on this day of fantasies.   Its Page One splash covered LeBron James' impending wedding with the usual outsize photos. Somehow, even in a tux,  he looked like he was cut out to be a tight end.

Within 24 hours, of course,  for the Browns (and the eager forecasters),  it all could change.

As a loyal Steelers birther,  I have learned to allow myself far more margin, figuring they could finish in last place - or win the Super Bowl.   With the Steelers, there is always the leading question of whether Big Ben will finish a game on his feet.

If not, consider this:  There's always next year. Are you with me?

Cleveland can enjoy another's pain

IT'S POSSIBLE that Dirk Nowitzki, the talented German power forward of the Dallas Mavericks, was the only player on the floor Sunday night who understood the word schadenfreude, which describes one's joy in another's pain. But as a modest and courteous athlete, Kirk would leave it to much of the basketball world to express in the wake of his team's surprising victory over the Miami Heat to claim the NBA championship. The final score simply focussed on the boorish behavior of LeBron James ever since he announced his departure from Cleveland in an outrageous one-hour TV spectacle in which he appeared as The King.

From there, it became a truism among the analysts that the Heat had just bought itself a slam-dunk championship with the addition of LeBron James and Chris Bosh. And in a incredibly tasteless self-congratulatory event - even for professional sports - it beatified LeBron, Bosh and Dwyane Wade on center stage. Wade assured the cheering audience that this collection of talent was "arguably the best trio to ever play the game of basketball."

It would be easy, said King LeBron, who added that they would not win one championship, but six.. seven...eight . You had to wonder why they would bother to play out the season. Well, even for royalty, those are the rules. And along came the aging Mavericks to challenge the gang that couldn't shoot straight. For guys like Nowtizki and Jason Kidd who had hung around for years trying to win their first championship ring, they simply went about their business in the playoffs and left the bragging to others.

The Heat had Lebron, who faltered, when they desperately needed Michael Jordan to close the deal. All that remains of the Heat season is the tattered promise to "wait 'til next year".

LeBrowns replacing LeBron on the lake?

NOW THAT LeBron is GONE, the media on the lake have found an emergency replacement to fill up the front page, as it did in today's Plain Dealer re the Browns' first practice session. The huge headline over a photo, story and Pluto column was "Plenty of excitement, and it's only first day". Right. May we now refer to the team as the LeBrowns?

Outrage: It's all the rage in America today

OUTRAGE HAS become a defining moment in the nation's psyche, not only from the Tea Partyers, but also from a lot of other people who cannot sit still on a hot summer evening and get a therapeutic laugh from Seinfeld. ( You might already see the extent of my TV diversions.). So where to begin to make my case?

Thanks to the fact that we have an African-American president, slavery is making it back in the hot discussion of America's values. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, full of rage, lashed Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert for morphing LeBron James into a "runaway slave" - which was kind of shocking inasmuch as runaway slaves never left town as a zillionaire with expectations of starring on a NBA championship team. Gilbert, of course, had lit the fuse with a clinically isolated example of searing outrage aimed at Mr. James - who lived through the experience without a single hint of anger about his new digs.

It reached a point in that exchange of outrage that some others took umbrage that Zydrunas Ilgouskas, the Cavaliers Eiffel Tower center (and equally immobile) did not produce the same outrage from the fans when he joined his itinerant teammate in Miami. Once again, the connective tissue was outrage, which never seems to tire sports fans.

And wouldn't you know that Rep. Michele Bachmann, the loony Republican from Minnesota, again expressed her outrage that President Obama was, in her words, channeling us into a "nation of slaves." Some Republicans are outraged daily by Michael Steele, the party's national chairman. The latest outburst was produced by Steele's accusation that Afghanistan was first conceived by Obama. My only conclusion is that the GOP hawks do not want to be denied the honor of calling it their war.

The NAACP slammed the Tea Partyers with a resolution charging them with racism - a charge that was heatedly denied by the TP upper classmen who have yet to explain why there are so many racist placards at some of their outings.

Glenn Beck, who markets outrage between commercials, is doubtless at sixes and sevens now that surveys have shown that he has lost half of his audience. Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican, was outraged by the Administration's demand that BP set up a fund to pay off people stricken by the oil spill. He meekly apologized to BP, calling Obama's effort a $20 billion "shakedown."

It looks like NASA's prediction that 2010 will be the hottest on record will be realized - not all of it by global warming.

A creative way to express one's LeBron dissent

FOOTNOTE: AN imaginative young man passed through the crowd at the Italian Festival downtown Sunday with his LeBron James jersey altered. He had removed the letters J, A and S from the name, leaving only "ME" above the big No. 23.

Jim Gray: LeBron's soft-bitten inquisitor

OVER AND OUT: The profound question of the week, against strong competition, arrived during the painful LeBron James interview by Jim Gray, the freelance reporter who asked prior to the DECISION: "You still a nail-biter?" Even though it was consistent with ESPN's amateur hour, I must still give Gray the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award.

Where were you the night of ...?.

YEARS FROM NOW you probably will be asked a question about a singular event of our generation and I'm here to prepare you:

"Where were you on the fateful evening in which we learned of what came to be known as THE DECISION?"

It's important to know these things as milestone prompters that pave our lives with historic stepping stones.

For example, I remember that as a kid I was playing checkers with my Uncle Jim in the living room when word came through that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

I also remember staying with an aunt in Altoona when V-J Day was announced.

I recall that my new brother-in-law arrived to say that Notre Dame had beaten Pennsylvania 27-20 (I think!) on my wedding Day.

And I was reluctantly driving to work and listening to the car radio at the moment that Bill Mazeroski hit one over the wall to defeat the hated Yankees in the World Series.

We can all recite special moments like these even though we don't remember last night's dinner. And years hence, the subject is likely to come up:

What were YOU doing when LeBron James announced his momentous decision? (Eh...ESPN. 9 P.M.)

Were you avoiding your civic responsibility by watching Antiques Roadshow or CSI?

Were you beating the heat by hanging around in the frozen foods section of the supermarket?

Were you randomly pushing buttons to unlock your computer?

"Yes," you will be prepared to say, "I remember it well. It was the night that I couldn't get the damn mouse to move on my computer screen for more than an hour."

Your friends may have even a better story.

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questiwill WILL BE ASKED OU WILL

As LeBron James goes, so goes LeBron James

WITH SPECULATION long-past exhaustion on the future home of LeBron James (Is there no end to the tension?), the only unexamined question now is how the young man will announce his decision. Will it be from the top of Cleveland's Terminal Tower? From a luxury yacht on Lake Erie? (Since Bush II, aircraft carriers are declasse for such urgent news.) Or maybe even a surprise cameo appearance on "Hot In Cleveland," the tepid TV series? Wherever it happens, will there be a fly-over?

Either way, LeBron's decision won't be slam-dunk for city

WE WILL ALL know LeBron James' momentous decision soon enough after weeks of speculation, rumors and, quite frankly at times, gasping nonsense. Certainly his presence in Cleveland is of some temporary economic benefit to the city; how much, who really knows?. Still, a larger question for the once-great city: Is the live-or-die economic future of Cleveland now fully dependent on a decision by a young super-star athlete? Some of the hand-wringing would have you believe that. If true, even if LeBron decides to stay - and I hope he does - the city will still have a long way to go to balance its books and regain its stature as a thriving city. Whatever happens, LeBron will be nothing more than a bit player in resolving the city's entrenched social, economic and political problems that won't respond to a slam-dunk.

Whirlpool: Sorry Indiana, we're off to Mexico

WHILE ARIZONA IS engaged in a zealous full-court press against illegal Mexican immigrants, Whirlpool will close its refrigerator plant in Evansville, Ind., tomorrow (Friday) and move the operation to a new plant in....Mexico. Meantime, the move will cost 1,100 Whirpool workers their jobs in Evansville, where the plant had been operating since 1956. The company said it was " uncompetitive from a cost standpoint." Critics of the move have pointed out that Whirlpool had received $19.3 million in stimulus money to strengthen its, eh... resources. A thought: If enough U.S. companies follow Whirlpool to Mexico, will we have found a solution to the immigration problem, if not the U.S. unemployment problem?

Bonehead-of-the week is Rob Nichols, GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich's press secretary, Rob Nichols, who said this of Gov. Strickland in a press release:

"Not until Ted Strickland feared needing their votes did he give urban Ohioans a second thought. Having grown up in a chicken shack on Duck Run, he has all but ignored our cities economies and their workers."

Yes, the governor did spend some of his childhood living in a chicken coop because of family poverty. But even though Nichols' perspective is the view from Wall Street via Kasich, he's still worth a Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) Award. Or should it have gone to Kasich, himself, who said he was "not part of the chorus" in northern Ohio who wants James to stay in Cleveland.

A WEEK TO GO and LeBron is keeping the sports media and fandom on edge about his plans. Heavens. (I think he should remain here.) The tension seems to be increasing as free agency day nears. What will the hitherto mentioned sports media do for news in July other than another Browns training camp filled with optimism? Back to LeBron: It's like the countdown moments when the Russian ships were heading to Cuba against President Kennedy's blockade. Will the story end happily? Or will the Cavaliers be doomed?

President Obama appears to have gained a few points (some grudgingly) as a man of action in firing Gen. McCrystal, following in the footsteps of Lincoln (Gen. McClellan) and Truman (Gen. MacArthur). The same can't be said about Congress, where Republicans and half-hearted Democrats have yet to find a substantive issue that they can't butcher to death. And these guys and gals are paid well to be dysfunctional, including plenty of cash from lobbyists.

LeBron doesn't dunk doughnuts

ASKED BY a magazine who would be his first choice to "dunk on", superstar LeBron James tartly responded:

"If it doesn't have to be a basketball player, George W. Bush. I would dunk on his ass, break the rim and shatter the glass."

To all of the groaners who will doubtless argue that King James should be more respectful, I would only respond that a president who dishonestly led us into a war that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and departed with an economic meltdown really doesn't deserve respect.

The benefits of the crab dribble

THE SAVING GRACE  of professional sports  is that it mindlessly thrusts you away from the burning issues of the day.  Today I learned of something called "crab dribble" which may or may not have cost the Cleveland Cavaliers a victory.  It is a kind of dance step executed regularly (it says here) by LeBron James as he bursts demon-like to the basket.  Whatever.  I have heard of crab cakes, crab casserole and crab bisque, as well as human crabs (take your pick).  But crab dribble?   Save your explanations.  I won't understand them anyway.  In what little intramural basketball that I played in my tiny high school,  I was merely told to aim the ball at a hoop and, maybe, once a week it would go  all the way through.  There, I've forgotten the economic crises already.  

Unemployment, Perino-style

DANA PERINO, the White House's forever overwhelmed press secretary who will be out of work in January, offered for economics textbooks the following insight into  why the Bush administration opposes an extension of unemployment benefits.   Responding to a press conference question, Perino Merino explained: "We want people to be able to return to work as soon as possible...I hope that everybody who wants to find a job can find a job."   And if they can't?  Dana's hopes won't make it so.  

Meantime, greeting me this morning on the front page of the Plain Dealer   was a big photo of Brady Quinn speaking in behalf of McCain-Palin in Cleveland.  Bench-warmer Brady, as you may be aware, has been figuratively out of work for more than a year since he signed a stratospheric contract with the Browns.  It figures that he would have a better opportunity to protect the cash under McCain's non-tax increase policies for the wealthy.   He has a lot of company among some other cash-rich athletes (with the exception of the cash-richest of them all on the lake,  Cleveland icon and Obama supporter LeBron James).