(UPDATE: See below for a word from the man behind @Cavs_Chants.)
Isn’t it just the kind of thing to would get picked up all over the media? Nothing’s a better story than when people get organized to act like sociopaths.
A “Delonte” chant? “Akron hates you”? That’s what we’re supposed to sing at LeBron when he comes back to Cleveland on Thursday night according to an impossibly cloying (and anonymous) social media campaign, @Cavs_Chants (website here, Twitter here, “chant sheet” here).
The Plain Dealer’s number one Cavs beat reporter Mary Schmitt Boyer is calling these “clever ideas.”
The AP’s Tom Withers calls them “creative,” which is one way to put it, because we could have never imagined something this embarrassingly dumb (this is what we’re supposed to sing at the start of the third quarter, according to “Cavs Chants”):
(To the tune of “My Country Tis of Thee”)
Our King he betrayed Thee
Couldn’t play any ‘D’
He has no RING!
Playoffs He Barely Tried
Embarassed Akrons Pride
No Doubt he really lied
He HAS NO RING! (Repeat as Necessary)
Repeat as necessary! What if people actually sang this?
We hope Rick Grayshock is right at Waiting for Next Year when he says that a unified response here is impossible. We think he might be because everybody grieves in his own way, and all that LeBron, his story, really is at bottom, at least at the moment, is incredibly and profoundly sad.
Folks can pretend like a man can be an island, and that the kid who grew up broke without a dad living in his homeless mom’s car should have known exactly how to react in an unprecedentedly complicated situation. They can pretend it’s obvious that seven years of ass kissing and looking the other way on the part of Cleveland’s media, the Cavs’ front office, and the posse of sychophants that surrounded the kid since he became an instant hundred millionaire at the age of 18 had absolutely no impact on LeBron’s bad decision. Folks can pretend it will make them feel better to chant about rumors that one of LeBron’s former teammates screwed his mom.
And if it really does make them feel better, they’re probably technically definitively sociopaths, at least for the moment. But everyone grieves in his own way. And at least they got on TV and picked up a bunch of Twitter followers for a few days, got to yell some mean stuff at one of Northeast Ohio’s own.
Hype machine!* Clever! Creative!
So unspeakably sad.**
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The LaughAtLeBron campaign seems like a much better idea (now on CNN!), if only because laughing is one decent way to respond to something so incredibly profoundly sad. The problems here are 1) that the LaughAtLeBron folks are “partners” with the LeBron_Chants people, and most importantly 2) that laughter can’t be forced or faked, and there’s just no way that so many would participate with the integrity necessary to muster a real laugh here. So this is how we’ll get LeBron. With a half-hearted chorus of fake laughter. Hardee-har.
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Figures that Gregg Doyel of CBS, ever the contrarian, comes off as a voice of reason here.
[F]or the love of God, don’t follow the lead of an … Esquire writer named Scott Raab, a Cleveland native who has taken to Twitter to stalk James — cursing him out, calling him Biblically juvenile names, behaving like the worst fan in the world. Which he may well be. Scott Raab may well be the worst Cleveland fan in the world. But he has a book to sell, and here I go, helping him pick up a few more Twitter followers. Maybe the joke’s on me.
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*Oh hey, look! Two ladies from Boston want us to send them money so they can make a documentary to tell us what it means to have lost LeBron. Where do we send the check!?
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**So much sadder that Dan Gilbert’s childish flaming has contributed to so much of this.
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UPDATE: We heard from the person behind “Cavs Chants,” Bob O’Brien, who’s a 19 year old freshman at Syracuse [we were close!], and corresponded cordially with us to explain where he’s coming from.
“I’m a prideful Clevelander, and as much as I’d like to say I don’t care what National voices say, I do care. ESPN, CNN, and everyone else is looking to jump onto Cleveland at the first sign of stupidity Thursday night. I figure we (Cleveland) could counteract one goon throwing a bottle with a unified effort of our anti-lebron sentiment. … I just think that the anger is going to be let out no matter what, why not attempt to unify and not have Cleveland be perceived as ‘creative’?”
O’Brien also explained that “[t]he [My Country 'Tis of Thee] ‘Jingle’ is simply wishful thinking that an English Soccer type atmosphere would break out,” which is fair enough, and a relief.
Anyway, the theory here is that anger and hatred are things to be suppressed and diffused, not nurtured and funneled toward other people. Thanks to O’Brien for getting in touch to help us get to the bottom of this fundamental disagreement.
