I don’t think any NBA player has had a week like Jeremy Lin’s having. Nor any Asian-American at that. He went from a virtual nobody to the hottest thing in all of sports, repping one of the greatest cities in the world. He capped off his stellar week with a win over the dominant Lakers, breaking a nine game winning streak held by LA over New York. He’s not making headlines because he’s Asian or a Harvard grad, but because he’s putting on great performances. Of course as imagined, social media is blowing up…#Linsanity, #Linning, and…a joke about Asian penis sizes? What?
“Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight.”
FOX Sports columnist Jason Whitlock tweeted that to his over 100,00 followers Friday night following Lin’s game. On the background of his Twitter page:
“Black people think I’m a sellout. White people think I’m a racist.”
No, I think everyone thinks you’re a racist now. For someone so passionate about the black community (and occasionally accused of playing the race card once too often), he apparently feels no qualms about stepping on other minority groups for some cheap humor. Predictably this has led to a firestorm of replies, including one from Deadspin founder Will Leitch asking Whitlock what the hell’s wrong with him. The next morning, a simple tweet from Whitlock:
“Child please.”
A sure sign that he's not taking the backlash too seriously. Of course you’re bound to run into a load of ignorant tweets while searching for “Lin”, but you wouldn’t expect one from a prominent sports reporter. Happily, a search on Whitlock’s Twitter name brings up people calling him out or calling for him to be fired.
On Sunday Whitlock posted his apology, in which he compared Lin’s NBA success with Tiger Woods’ success in golf – a great parallel, for sure. It was a proud moment for him as a black man, and he decided to attack Asians during their moment. He acknowledged his attempt at comedy as “sophomoric”, and he gives a nod to the Asian American Journalist Association on calling him out. Would he have seen his own hypocrisy without the public outrage? That, I guess, we’ll never know for sure.
Ah well, I’m happy to ride the bandwagon until March when the Knicks play the Bulls. Until then, at least I can enjoy some of the better comments being said about Lin. My favorite from last night – a sign reading “HEY KOBE BETTER LUCK TOMORROW”. Could Justin Lin and Jeremy Lin be long lost cousins?
