Linsanity and the presidency

From zero to hero is the hyperbole used on 23-year-old Jeremy Lin, a SF Bay Area boy of Taiwanese descent, an outstanding HS basketball player who failed to garner the athletic scholarship from neighboring Stanford or the other dream school UCLA. Harvard noticed his 4.2 GPA and took him in to excel in Ivy League basketball. Still, he missed the serious draft of the NBA proscouts. 

Lin got a partially guaranteed contract deal with hometown Golden State Warriors but was waived to the Houston Rockets only to end up with the Knicks who dribbled him into the majors from the minors. An ironic turn of events occurred when injured Knicks star forward Carmelo Anthony allowed Lin to play point guard, leading his team to seven consecutive wins, enough for the anemic press, starved for a real story, to give itself cosmic permission to painfully pun the Queen’s English out of control.  Linsufferably Lincredible! 

The Linmania that has since hit the Big Apple livens up a shortened basketball season with no less than Laker superstar Kobe Bryant conceding more than just perseverance on Lin’s part in upending the Lakers’ usual romp over the Madison Square Garden opponent.  Catalyzing a Knicks’ resurgence, Time Magazine put Lin on its cover, declaring that the Lin phenomenon was real.

Rumors has it that Kim Kardashian of Reality TV, reputedly not shy in prowling the Big League’s locker rooms, reportedly dropped the notion of a date into the paparazzis’ photo ambush lookout! There are no shortages of detractors. Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., famous for denigrating the Pacman while avoiding a ring confrontation, tweeted on Lin’s notoriety as nothing but a concession to an Asian! The racist card is out.

While the power of height and brawn dominates full court and hoof rims, Lin’s 6’3” height on spindly 90 kg of lean but mean weightlifting frame produced Linconceibable grace with nary a drop of conceit at play, seldom seen in the big league.  The drama at full court, with an evangelical Christian wearing the assurances of his faith slightly less on than the in-your-face shove and show of football’s Tebow, became Lintelligently more Linteresting! 

But today is Presidents’ Day, with old GeoWash’s birthday becoming the occasion to honor all of the country’s Presidents, and this year being a Presidential election, we shudder at the vicious insanity attendant to the campaign.  The Republicans, in a feat of internecine bashing, has Mitt Romney’s head bobbing up and down the lead on the Red column while homophobic and anti-abortion Rick Santorum resurges, Newt Gingrich insurgents, and Ron Paul nibbles on entrails!  All loudly have Obama on their cross-hair sights!

 We obviously do not mind Obama executing a well-orchestrated waltz into the White House for a second term but it is the Office of the President that frames our insanity concern.   

GeoWash’s historical fame was his refusal to be crowned King George of the New World.  Instead, the noble and calculated intent of the separation of powers, with built-in checks-and-balances, born of distrust of Royal Monarchies, organized the three branches of government to formulate the structures of order, justice and welfare.  Out to create a triad of collegiality, check-and-balances deteriorated into a triune struggle for power; the Executive expected to act royally without the crown (through its feudal Departments and Bureaus), while Congress stages popular shows and verbal gladiatorial fairs but fails to fairly legislate, and the Judicial branch retire their brains up high in the corporate sky way above the pedestrian rights of the main street crowd. 

Add to this the tiered nature of political sovereignty with the Feds rhetorically functioning from the mandate of the Constitution and the Acts of Congress while the States assertively maintain self-reliant integrity without ceding powers to extraneous entities beyond its borders.  Joins a third group of incorporated and unincorporated territories, non-voting representations like the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and a compounded problem comes in triplicates.  Thus, a dilemma of built-in dialectical contradiction between the Federal and State bodies perpetually abides.  Equal-but-separate cries emanate from the States and territories, and that’s how we got Uncle Ben suing the Feds in Federal Court! 

Obama campaigned on the reversal of Executive powers to be weighted more on the side of broad proletarian participation, “Yes, We Can”, but was thwarted quickly when Wall Street cried “Wolf” on the fractures of the nation’s financial foundations.  We still have a big question mark on the Executive Office.

 Linsanity ascends the media stage when Xi Jing Peng, next China President is in town, acting like the old Abe-Teddy-FDR-Truman-Kennedy Presidential politico revisiting Iowa farms and stopping over L.A. where 40 percent of China exports enter the U.S.

 Lin has a birth certificate from California, a nice guy with a non-judgmental evangelical smirk, and has the Lintelligence to play gracefully under pressure, but he is more than a decade away from the White House so we won’t mind if he hangs out with Kim awhile.   

That leaves Obama Linevitably close to a second term, if I may be allowed my Lincisive analysis! Happy Presidents’ Day.