O’Reilly, Trump could learn a lot from LeBron

Reading Donald Trump’s Twitter rant about LeBron James this past week reminds me of the time a couple of years ago when Bill O’Reilly – remember Bill O’Reilly? – put forth the proposition that poor people were to blame for their own poverty, and that all they had to do to lift themselves out of their sorrowful state was to “get themselves educated.”

His theory was that every poor person should simply go to school, make good grades, enroll in the college of his or her own choice, earn a marketable degree and slide quickly and easily into a good-paying job somewhere in America where, presumably, an adequate supply of such jobs is perpetually available.

I remember wondering at the time, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”

I assume that under the O’Reilly Plan, the inner-city single working mother with four kids from absentee fathers should quit her three jobs immediately and move her family to northern California, where she could enroll as an undergrad at Stanford University to study aerospace engineering. I mean, what could be easier than that?

This idea was offered, of course, before Bill O’Reilly was forced to give up his $18.5-million-a-year job at Fox News when it was revealed that he was a serial sexual abuser who cost his network $13 million in payoffs to a collection of women who charged him with sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior.

I don’t know what O’Reilly is doing now – and I don’t care enough to google him to find out – but I assume he still believes that poor black and brown people are either too lazy or too stupid to lift themselves up from the depths of despair to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the good old white privileged, Christian-worshipping, Republican-controlled country we used to call the United States of America.

I also don’t know how many people could have gone to college on the $18.5 mill that Fox paid this pompous, arrogant, racist blowhard, or the $13 million they spent to buy off his accusers, but I don’t remember hearing that O’Reilly with his $85 million estimated net worth or Fox News with all of its millions had ever volunteered to help.

Which brings me to LeBron James and Donald John Trump.

According to Wikipedia, LeBron Raymone James Sr. was born in 1984 in Akron, Ohio, to a 16-year-old mother and a father with an extensive criminal record who was little more than a casual boyfriend of hers. Life was difficult for him and his family, which moved from apartment to apartment in the seedier neighborhoods of Akron while his mother, Gloria, struggled to find steady work.

“Realizing that her son would be better off in a more stable family environment,” the story goes, Gloria allowed LeBron to move in with the family of a local youth football coach who introduced him to basketball when he was nine years old. He eventually enrolled in St. Vincent–St. Mary High School, a predominantly white private Catholic school, where he established himself as NBA-ready at the ridiculous age of 17.

You can google him to read a lot more about his life, but know that LeBron James is considered to be the best basketball player in the world right now, and is regarded by many as the greatest player of all time. This coming year, his first with the Los Angeles Lakers, James will earn a reported salary of $35.65 million.

Know also that he’s not keeping it all for himself.

Last week, James made headlines around the world when he opened an elementary school in his hometown of Akron geared toward at-risk kids who are suffering the same kind of struggles that James himself faced as a child. The “I Promise” school will provide 240 third- and fourth-grade students with free tuition; free uniforms; free breakfast, lunch and snacks; free transportation within two miles; a free bicycle and helmet (LeBron used one to get around as a kid); access to a food pantry for their family; guaranteed tuition for all graduates to the University of Akron; and job placement services for parents of the children plus help acquiring GEDs for those who need one.

For this phenomenal act of kindness and generosity, James drew the attention of one Donald J. Trump, the faux-president of the United States, but instead of acknowledging James for his humanitarian gift or offering him some kind of award, Trump instead insulted the African-American basketball star in a Twitter rant following an interview he did with Don Lemon, another successful black man, on CNN:

Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!

A comment like that from the man who occupies the Oval Office is so moronic, so childish, so petulant and so immature it almost makes Bill O’Reilly look smart. (I said almost.) A lot of memes and social media comments have been posted since Trump’s tweet and I won’t recount them all, but here are a few of my favorites:

“Donald Trump would need a heart and brain transplant to become half the man that LeBron James is.”

“One man puts kids in cages; the other one puts them in school.”

“Trump should STFU and go back to tweeting about the Electoral College, because a fight with LeBron James is a fight he cannot win.”

And, finally, “Lebron James invested over $100 million to send students to a university. Donald Trump had to pay $25 million for ripping off university students.”

I want to add one additional, somewhat-related thought:

A couple of years ago, I was sitting in the bleachers waiting for the start of a basketball game between Fairmont State and West Liberty universities. Fairmont State’s team at the time was composed of both black and white players, but most of the regulars were black while West Liberty’s players were almost exclusively white.

During warm-ups, a white man I didn’t know sidled over to me uninvited to comment on the whiteness of West Liberty’s team. “Yes,” I responded, “they’re pretty white.” His comeback was, “And they’re intelligent, too.”

Now I’d like to believe he wasn’t suggesting that Fairmont’s African-American players were dumb, but somehow I can’t talk myself into that, especially after the bigoted white American president who inherited his wealth tweeted a similar sentiment about a highly successful television news anchor and possibly the greatest professional basketball player of all time, both of whom were smart enough to rise to the top of their professions after overcoming adversity in their personal lives.

Trump and O’Reilly could learn a lesson from those two guys. If they wanted to. Which they don't.