On Wednesday night LeBron James took to social media to speak out about the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was gunned down by two white men while jogging, unarmed, in February in Georgia.
Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, admitted to getting guns and pursuing Arbery as he jogged past them, according to police records.
On Tuesday, a video of the shooting was made public. James spoke out on Twitter a few hours later:
Which brings us to what happened next: Fox Sports personality Jason Whitlock quote tweeted James, then accused James of “using” the death of Arbery to … showcase the difference between LeBron and Michael Jordan?
As more than one person pointed out in the replies, James never mentioned Jordan, and the only person who had done that was Jason Whitlock himself. In fact, you could make the strong argument the only person trying to make this tragedy about himself is, in fact, Whitlock.
Which makes this whole thing depressing and predictable, and I fully realize that by writing about this I am, in turn, giving Whitlock what he so desperately craves with moves like this: attention.
I don’t have a good answer. Stay quiet, you risk tacitly validating what Whitlock is saying. Speak up, he gets what he wants in continuing to, however fleetingly, stay relevant.
But there’s a shelf life to these things, and Whitlock may be past his expiration date.
