OK, I lied. Second blog post and I’ve already lied. Probably the first of many.
I am going to say a bit more about Lebron and Mel. As I’ve procrastinated to get started with this blogging gig, I continued to have a nagging feeling about the first post. The contrast that I juxtaposed seems even starker to me the more I think about it. Lebron, with “The Decision,†and Mel Turpin, also a former Cleveland Cavalier, taking his own life. One man on a stage with a worldwide, live television audience to announce where he would be playing basketball, and another quietly (albeit violently) killing himself in his modest, middle-class environs. One man dominating newspaper and television headlines literally for weeks, and another’s death a side note, a 15 second blurb encapsulating his 49 years here on Earth. I am filled with an uneasiness as I think about these two events.
The juxtaposition is not as neat as something like Life vs. Death, and perhaps especially because I felt some death watching Lebron as well. Not because of what he did to Cleveland, or Cleveland’s “loss.†Beyond the gross commercialization and utter gratuity of “The Decision,†I felt Lebron’s emptiness. At what was supposed to be his grandest moment, carefully choreographed for maximum impact, there was nothing. He felt empty, and at least in the moment he seemed like he had no idea who he is. Watching was awkward and uncomfortable because he seemed so ungrounded, so vacuous, so small. A great, bigger than life, American athletic hero reduced to a stammer and cliched speech he could barely get out of his mouth. Lebron died in that moment — well, in that hour — suicide by narcissism. There was nothing there.
I do not know Lebron. My knowledge of him is limited to marveling at his athletic gifts, observing his demeanor on the court and with the media, and what I see and read about how he is portrayed. He certainly has been described as a narcissist. I can’t presume anything about who he really is, or what he really cares about, but at a minimum the screen character he played in “The Decision†was narcissism pure and simple. Mel Turpin’s “moment†was narcissistic in a different way, but perhaps also more true.