"Long ago, right when he was beginning his career, Shaquille O’Neal once told me, “Look, I know people are going to make a cartoon out of me. The important thing is to control your own cartoon.” (This marked Shaq as a mind worth watching.) The construction of the Jeremy Lin cartoon continues apace. He’s an example of the Melting Pot, in a country where the situation for most immigrants is bad, and, in many places, getting worse. (For, say, people picking fruit in Alabama, the melting pot is more like a roasting pan.) He’s a Man Of Faith, a Tim Tebow for another sport and another season. (Two major differences: Lin hasn’t yet put his faith in the street by doing television commercials for it, and Lin can, you know, actually play.) He’s the new King Of New York, which has needed a basketball hero, largely because it is New York and it has the impulse control of a toddler, and it wants what it wants when it wants it. He’s an excuse for racist performance art, and he’s the occasion for yet another tiresome debate over “political correctness."
