Cultural Waterloo: The LeBron James Fiasco

We wrote almost ten months ago that the 9/12 march on Washington, D.C. would represent a kind of media waterloo —a milestone in American awakening to the extraordinarily out-of-touch and biased nature of all major media outlets. There was essentially no media coverage of the largest protest in American history. That non-coverage spoke in a way that a million essays never could. Time will tell just how much of a waterloo it was for the media.

Which brings us to the LeBron James fiasco. We’re speaking, of course, of the spectacle of LeBron James’ decision this past Thursday night to join the Miami Heat basketball team. It may mark a waterloo for the celebrity/fame-worshipping culture.

Now, we know there are millions of Americans who don’t know or care about professional basketball or LeBron James, but they are many of the same millions who are not part of the celebrity/fame worshipping culture in the first place. But for those who are into it and witnessed the mess, we suspect there is a feeling of a collective need to take a shower, get cleaned up, and return to a better culture.

James is a great basketball player—two-time NBA MVP— whose contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers expired, leaving him free rejoin Cleveland under a new contract or go play with whatever other team he wanted to play with (subject only to the next team’s ability to meet his compensation demands). He ultimately chose Miami, where he will be joined by Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, two other recently signed free agents. James will reportedly be paid $96M over five years, which is not as much as he could have made elsewhere, but should keep his bills paid.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with James going wherever he wants to earn as much or as little as he wants. That’s what freedom is all about. That wasn’t the fiasco.

The fiasco was the cringe-worthy spectacle created over “The Decision” and the stunning PR incompetence and tone-deafness that accompanied it.

James became a free agent on July 1; six teams made formal presentations of their ‘bid’ for him to join them, and the sporting media—most notably ESPN—went round-the-clock with coverage and opinion and speculation over what was happening and what it all meant. Then James decided to make his decision public via a one-hour live television show on ESPN, which itself was preceded by a three-hour preview program on ESPN.

We actually didn’t watch it live, and later could only stomach a few 30 second snippets without feeling nauseous. ESPN interviewers, allegedly adults, had to wade in with probing questions about the burden and pressure of making this decision, and James had to put on the pained face and make a valiant effort to capture in words just how tough it all was.

What a pathetic joke. What a mockery of real burden and real pressure. In a country where millions are unemployed, and thousands of soldiers literally face life and death every day, James must decide between $100M here or there, and we must offer our sympathy for how tough that decision is, and our admiration for his courage in making it. Please.

And on top of this, reports are now surfacing that since exiting the NBA playoffs a month ago, James hasn’t returned a call to the Cleveland franchise that paid him gazillions for the last seven years. “The Decision” to leave Cleveland doesn’t sound like it was tough; it sounds like it was made over a month ago. But the point isn’t the rudeness or lack of even common courtesy toward Cleveland, it’s the tone-deafness that caused James and apparently everyone in his advisory circle to think everything was about him—that a giant television spectacle to celebrate his decision to go to Miami would have no repercussions, image-wise, fan-support wise, endorsement-wise, or any-wise other than to increase his fame and celebrity and fortune.

But it’s not working out that way; instead, what is happening is almost like a painful waking up from a cultural hangover, a dawning recognition that conscience has a role to play in PR and in cultivating a truly valuable image in any decent culture. Fame and celebrity have never been so visibly disconnected from substance and character. James’ treatment of Cleveland is drawing almost universal condemnation (Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert truly went ballistic and bizarre); and what appears now to have been a sham entertaining of offers from other teams is generating ill will among the fans and officials of those teams. And through it all, the vision of the live television spectacle, with breathless questions over utterly vapid issues, and a live audience of children brought in from a local Boys & Girls club to swoon and adore over pure narcissism—well, you get the picture. (Yes, it was nice that the Boys & Girls club received the $2.5M in advertising revenue from the show, but it just reeked as a prop).

We hope and expect there is some soul-searching going on among ESPN executives and professionals (assuming there were any) involved in advising James. Even if the ratings for the ESPN show were significant, the question might actually be asked: at what price to our view of ourselves and the culture we have created? Some will fall back on the usual view that all publicity is good publicity, and ESPN executives will also take some comfort that they are still pretty much the only game in town in terms of ‘approved’ 24/7 sports coverage. So there may be some ‘what the hell’ dismissals of the whole episode. But our own view is that something bigger than that happened. A collective, deep-seated, instinctive disgust with our culture has been stirred, and it may have a much broader impact than anyone knows. If it proves to be a waterloo in the current celebrity/fame-worshipping culture, and causes more of us to look for more substantive heroes and activities and values, that’s all to the good.

Paul Gable

July 9, 2010