Ex-Celt called for foul in China
It was just a small item in yesterday’s news, an easyto-overlook tidbit from sports, yet it had much to say about the way we do and view things here in America.
If you remember the name Guerschon Yabusele you’re a pretty sharp Celtics fan, since he was with the Shamrocks only long enough to have had a cup of coffee a year or so ago.
But the 6-foot-8 Frenchman wound up finding a niche with the China Basketball Association’s Nanjing Monkey Kings, with whom he was successfully plying his skills when he ran afoul of the CBA’s no-nonsense view of patriotic decorum.
While his teammates were uniformly gazing upon China’s five-star red flag during the pregame playing of the Chinese national anthem last Friday, Yabusele kept his head lowered for which he was fined $1,400, sternly reprimanded, and lambasted on Chinese social media for not showing proper respect.
He was also warned to not let it happen again.
That story rang a bell here.
If it brings quarterback Colin Kaepernick to your mind, too, you’re not alone.
Kaepernick did a lot more than lower his head. While representing the 49ers and the NFL, he not only refused to stand for America’s national anthem, but then wrapped himself in phony martyrdom, declaring, “I’m not going to show pride in a country that oppresses people of color.”
For that, he’s become a cult hero, a paragon exercising his rights.
But there was a time, not all that long ago, when it didn’t have to be pointed out that rights go hand-in-hand with responsibilities. It’s not complicated; sometimes we have a responsibility not to do things we have a right to do.
Back in 1994, shortly after this column left its home in sports, there was another hubbub over an 18-year-old
“ugly American” named Michael
Fay who was about to be caned
— flogged with a fourfoot rattan
— by Singapore authorities who found him vandalizing parked cars with cans of spray paint in the middle of the night.
That was simply not acceptable in Singapore, where cars rarely had to be locked.
President Bill Clinton fired off a letter to his counterpart, President Ong Teng Cheong, requesting leniency, explaining we’re not big on such harsh punishments here, even as he was sending another letter to the people of Japan, apologizing for the randomly brutal murders of two Japanese students on the foreboding streets of L.A.
It was suggested here that those dots connected.
So, too, do the lessons of Yabusele and Kaepernick.