The Merkinist

Earlier this morning, ESPN.com ran a headline about Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin, the 23-year-old, out-of-nowhere point guard who has lit up the league and lifted a disappointing team to national prominence once again. He’s got legitimate NBA size and build, and real game, too, with the ability to drive hard to the basket, make impressive passes and nail last second three pointers. He’s been the key to the Knicks’ sudden seven game winning streak, and ball-crazy New York — along with the sensation-crazy internet — has been going nuts for Lin, including finding every conceivable pun for a last name that stretches across his jersey alone in a league of Andersons, Jameses and Millers. 

Jeremy Lin is Asian — a Taiwanese-American from Palo Alto, California who went to Harvard — and after a turnover-laden game that marked his first loss as a Knicks starter, ESPN.com splashed the words “A Chink in the Armor” underneath a photo of him mishandling the basketball. The internet — the same internet that has turned a God-loving novice into a search term that out-Googles Jesus — is outraged. And, of course, the headline was egregious, offensive and downright racist. But to act as if this gross mistake wasn’t coming, to fake shock that anyone could even think of his race, is nearly as bad. 

As a sports-crazed kid growing up around New York City in the early part of the previous decade, I had posters and carefully-scissored Post and Daily News back pages chronicling the brief and glorious run of the National League Champion Mets lining my bedroom walls. I had Mike Piazza, the super star, Edgardo Alfonzo, the quiet rock, and Robin Ventura, the charismatic face of the team, staring at me from all directions, as if to say, we couldn’t have done it without you, Jordan.

My real sports idols, however, were Gary Cohen and Howie Rose, the play-by-play broadcasters who wove those tales of hardball glory over WFAN, which I’d listen to with the TV on mute and was the number one pre-set on all the various radios that I kept stashed under my pillow for all those extra-inning games on school nights. As scrawny Jewish kid, I knew from an early age that my best chance to make it in pro sports wasn’t on the field, but in the media.

Sure, I was a decent Little League player, with a few game-winning hits and a weird love for taking grounders, but I knew that the seemingly ironically-titled “Jewish Sports Heroes” book that my grandfather once bought me wasn’t something that required frequent reprint for all the new chapters for new heroes constantly being added. My dad took me to the batting cages far more than my average bat speed and slap-single power warranted, but there was no pretense that hard work, and some help from those Fred McGriff-approved Tom Emanski training videos would put me on a path to actually being paid to play baseball. Those over-priced, green-bronze cage tokens were an investment in my happiness and warped teenage self-confidence, not a down payment that would return the gold and treasure given out liberally to first round draft picks.

So, when a skinny kid began hitting homeruns miles out of Toronto’s Skydome, and then cashed in with a massive contract in the Hollywood spotlight of Dodger Stadium, I was surprised, elated and proud to call myself a Shawn Green fan. Sure, he didn’t play for my Mets, but he was a member of the other underdog team I was born into: the Jews. Now, I wasn’t at all religious then and I still only know when the high holidays are here when I see my little brother tweet about a day off from school in late September, but damnit, I could reasonably imagine that this guy, unlike seemingly every other ballplayer, was just like me: he probably had zany relatives, was constantly called by a nervous-but-loving mom, spent half his childhood learning about the Holocaust and felt weirdly proprietary over bagels, especially when all the kids who got to celebrate Christmas were eating them before homeroom.

Green was one of the National League’s best sluggers for a few years, and he’d have been a star no matter what. But naturally, because he was different, the media gave him special attention. Whether he liked it or not, he was the face of Jewish athletics, this generation’s Sandy Koufax, who, over thirty years after his retirement, was still the gold standard for big league Yids. No doubt, he was covered as someone, something, different.

After a while, it began to grate on me: why couldn’t we just appreciate his talent, and let him be a regular ballplayer, who gets interviewed and highlighted after game winning RBI, with puns made on his name, not the different religious symbol he wore on a silver chain underneath his jersey — especially when huge, silver and diamond crosses were known to thump the chests of half of the league’s players when they ran around the bases?

And when he came to the Mets, during their momentous (and then soul-crushing) 2006 run to the NLCS, forget it; I was interning for the team that summer, and one of my sharpest memories amidst all the winning and celebrating was the attention paid to the diminished right fielder who became the toast of the most Jewish part of the country.

I felt that, instead of being a star who happened to be Jewish, Green was famous for being the Jewish star. And the same thing is happening to Jeremy Lin, but a million times worse.

Lin, as I said, can ball. No doubt. And when boxer Floyd Mayweather said that Lin is only getting hyped because he’s Asian, he rightly got smacked by the media and fans on Twitter. But the fact is that, Mayweather, probably quite accidentally, raised a valid point. Lin, with his monster numbers, buzzer-beating heroics and winning ways, would be celebrated regardless of his race, especially in a town that, quite literally, gives its sports heroes keys to the city. But it’s hard for me to not think that Lin is also being viewed by some as a novelty act, a high-flying world-beater who, in street clothes, might be mistaken for a math major.

It’s a quiet racism, unsung because they were never slaves in America, went through no wildly-public genocide in Europe (though they’ve suffered plenty of massacres in that great, unknown continent of theirs) and are now seen by xenophobes as our smarter, harder-working cross-Pacific rivals, but Asians do indeed face their own uphill struggle against stereotypes and prejudice. And so Lin, in breaking all those stereotypes, is being giddily greeted as some sort of ninja (he’s been called the Linja) or anime hero, his seemingly inexplicable success amplified by the fact that he looks different than anyone else on the court — or, for the most part, any court throughout the nation.

I’m a Knicks fan and have enjoyed this run as much as anyone, especially after all the years I’ve suffered with this team. I’ve even made my fair share of Lin puns (though mostly to lampoon the media of which I am now a part and the internet that I sometimes detest), and have had plenty of conversations with fellow liberal New Yorkers who wouldn’t dream of making a racial slur but can’t help but get excited over the bizarre and thrilling adventure on which this kid has led the Knicks.

We’d love him regardless of his race, because he’s damn talented and a winner, but we should at least admit that the goofiness, the puns, the sudden inclusion on the national stage of All-Star weekend and the dedicated merchandise booth at Madison Square Garden, all that is undoubtedly linked to his race. And it’s okay to celebrate it — every kid, regardless of race or religion, deserves a sports role model — but don’t act surprised when it suddenly goes awry, like it did with ESPN’s headline.

Note: ESPN has now apologized, quite curtly, for the headline.

Close Ties to Goldman Enrich Romney’s Public and Private Lives

Mr. Romney’s positions and pedigree have helped draw to his side major donors in the financial world. The securities and investment industry has given more money to Mr. Romney than any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and some of its leading figures have donated millions of dollars to Restore Our Future, the “super PAC” bolstering Mr. Romney’s campaign. Goldman employees are also the biggest source of donations to Free & Strong America PAC, a group Mr. Romney founded but no longer controls… But other elements of Mr. Romney’s personal and business ties to Goldman may prove more controversial.

Instead of having journalists tip toe around things, saying candidates’ umbilical connection to Wall Street “may prove controversial” and that it “draws criticism,” can we just call the total big business domination of our candidates what it is? Just call it bribery and corruption.

Then, instead of subjecting us to watching outlets covering dispassionately the preposterous farse of one corporate-owned candidate attacking another, just ban corporate contributions altogether and require candidates to show their tax returns.

That way, our politicians aren’t controlled by big business, and we can actually talk about real issues, not watch a bunch of rich guys bullshit about who is wrong whilst holding the key to their own plush closet of skeletons.

This evening, TV Line relayed the news that CBS has ordered three new shows. One of them, they report, is called called “Friend Me” and “follows two guys who move from Indiana to Los Angeles to begin exciting careers at the deal-finding website, Groupon.”

Let’s make one thing clear: CBS doesn’t give a shit about you, the viewer.

That out of the way, I have four theories about the motivations behind this seemingly-inexplicable move.

1. They are actively trying to see how far they can go before turning off their audience. The blatant racism of “Rob!” and “Two Broke Girls” didn’t do the trick, so maybe a show about a website that sells a bunch of massages and bologna sandwiches for cut rate prices will finally get the channel changed.

2. The show is a rejected QVC pilot that CBS thought would be a better fit with their more senior audience.

3.  Product placement! Who can say tie-ins with 72% off local florists in each TV market?!

4. They thought to themselves, “How can we make the worst possible version of ‘The Social Network,’ without paying attention to any of that Best Picture’s actual themes, or even giving consideration to the correct terminology used by the disaster of a web service that we are making the subject of our show?”