We’ve learned a lot from the National Basketball Association’s kowtow to the People’s Republic of China.
Here are five takeaways.
First, capitalism is loyal to no country.
Mitch Albom, a columnist for the Detroit Free Press, aptly headlined his October 13 piece, “Price for the NBA in China? Its soul.” Albom added, “China continues to seduce American businesses. But we’re starting to see the real price of all those billions.”
Then there’s the NBA’s leading player, LeBron James, who should forever be remembered as the man kneeling in that photo that ran atop the Drudge Report on October 15; the caption: “LeBron Bows to Communists.” James has proven himself to be as supine and spineless as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
And while James is known mostly as an athlete, he is, in fact, a full-blown capitalist combine, reaping hundreds of millions in endorsements and movie deals. In the harsh words of Washington Post film critic Sonny Bunch, “If LeBron James is an amoral monster, he’s no more a monster than most others in the film industry.”
Speaking of the film industry, Breitbart News’s John Nolte has pointed out that Hollywood’s record of surrendering to China is, if anything, worse than the NBA’s.
Of course, the issue is broader than the NBA, and broader than Hollywood; just about every big American corporation has come to rely on China to produce goods in that land of low wages, lousy working conditions, and mucho pollution. How can, or should, American workers compete with that? As Erick Erickson put it, “American companies are signaling they like communist money more than American freedom.”
Is the Fortune 500 patriotic? Fuhgeddaboutit.