Image-creation and LeBron James

Beginning with the paparazzi, the question for me is whether there really is some amorphous thing that makes it seem that the celebrities are hiding something or whether today's celebrities have developed this ability to always actually hold something back, to make sure that there is some piece of self that they can feel belongs only to them and not to us. The fact that I bring this up tells you which direction I lean in. There are the little things, like Tom Cruise's sense of humor, Shaquille O'Neal's philandering, or Matt Damon's charity work (maybe you read the Esquire story that talked about his foundation, which he basically refuses to talk about) that you only get hints and pieces about. (In Shaq's case, of course he's not going to talk about it, but the little hints and pieces we get don't come from him, unlike they might from other stars.)

Then there is, as you allude to regarding Tom Cruise, the bigger thing: why are so few stars, especially male stars, publicly out? The theory has always been "people won't watch a gay star," or, at least, "the studios are so afraid that people might not watch a gay star that they just won't take the risk." Neil Patrick Harris is exploding this idea a little bit, but of course even he was closeted for a good long while. But besides Cruise, there are the ever-present rumors about Tobey Maguire, the infamous Kevin Spacey outing, Jodie Foster's years of coyness on the issue, Mike Piazza straddling that metrosexual/gay line, and on and on. That's not even mentioning Diddy. Or David Hyde Pierce, who didn't come out until a few years ago. Or the inside info I have on Jake Gyllenhaal.

Anyway, we've got these constant rumors about this guy or that guy, but are we so sure that people are still holding back on the advice of their agents and managers and publicists? Or has it morphed into something else, something where, with all the rest of your business hanging out for everyone to see, you have to hold something back, there has to be something you won't have to talk about with the magazine profile writer. And if you're picking something, maybe something as big as being gay (not that it should be big, but there's a lot of shoulds in the world that aren't) would be what you'd pick.

The people who go the other direction, who attempt to differentiate themselves by being completely out there, are fascinating cases in themselves. There're the reality TV people, of course, like the Kardashians, but I'm not even really counting them. (Maybe that's just because I don't want the shows so I don't think about them that much.) I'm thinking more of Megan Fox, or the period where Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton were married. All these outlandish interviews and stories come out about this one's bisexual, that one wears her husband's blood in a pendant, etc. Fox, of course, has been compared to Jolie in a variety of ways, so these interviews she gives have a whiff of cynicism -- she's so obviously emulating Angelina's outrageousness that you just can't believe anything she says. Hell, she's already retracted the bisexual comment. Angelina, at least, took a few years before she started pulling back some of the crazy stuff she and Billy Bob used to say.

It's a fascinating and savvy strategy: you give away "everything," but really, you just lie, or you blow things out of proportion, or you deflect questions about yourself by making outrageous statements about other people, etc. etc. etc. And it works because magazines aren't sending Gay Talese out to follow around Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra anymore. They're sending Scott Raab (don't get me started) to get three hours with Megan Fox. If you've only got a lunchtime interview to work with, you have to build a story around what the person says, and someone can say any damn thing they want.

I shouldn't lay all the blame on the publications themselves. Megan Fox isn't letting this chubby asshole from Ohio follow her around for a whole week. She (or her people, but to us, whatever, it's the same thing) controls her image entirely.

The natural question is how LeBron fits into this. At some point, something's going to happen with him. A few things already have, like refusing to shake the hands of the playoff opponents who bested his team. But something worse is bound to happen. Maybe he'll rape someone, like Kobe. Maybe he'll have three kids out of wedlock, like a down month for Shawn Kemp. Maybe he'll stab someone, like Ray Lewis. Or, hell, maybe instead of something bad, he'll be outed. The point is, he's the guy we feel like we know because of his clowning, his ever-present smile, his attempts at going all growly-face during tense moments in games. Part of it's physical: he has a very open and expressive face, so we think we can read things there. Part of it's that we've been waiting for him since he was 16. But you have to ask whether part of it is genius image creation, because seriously, what do we really know about him? We know he was a bandwagonner in his youth because he grew up in Akron but he's a Bulls, Yankees, and Cowboys fan. And then what else? I think the Simmons story illustrates this, indirectly. Simmons creates this fantasy about LeBron and Shaq taking everyone out to dinner in L.A. and fighting over who gets to pick up the check. Do we have any evidence this could actually happen? Of course we don't. It's all based on what he's done on court and what his puppet does in those ubiquitous and hilarious Nike ads. So what's going to happen when (not if) something punctures that incredible facade? Will he become Mike Tyson? Will we just ignore it the way we ignore the fact that God-fearing, no-cursing, righteous-living Dwight Howard has a child out of wedlock with a cheerleader? Will we poke good-natured fun at him the way we do Travis Henry or Shawn Kemp? Will it more subtly change our perceptions, like how we all now know that Michael Jordan is a complete dick, or that Shaq is an immature bully?

Much as I don't like the guy, based on my feelings that he's a complete fraud, I'm actually not hoping for something bad to come out about him. It just feels inevitable. In fact, maybe that's the best way to convince him to go to New York. If he does something terrible as a Cavalier, he's in Cleveland. First, people there don't have anything to do besides talk about LeBron, so the story's talk-radio half-life would be two to three times as long as it would be if he were in a city, like New York, where people have better things to do. Second, and probably more importantly, community norms are just different. New Yorkers are used to all sorts of weird shit. Marv Albert bit his girlfriend. He's from Brooklyn. Stephon Marbury bought courtside tickets to his own team's game. Coney Island. Ron Artest made up a story about some dude getting stabbed with a table leg. Queens. Lamar Odom is addicted to candy. Queens. David Letterman slept with his assistant (although let's not get too far into that). He's not a New Yorker, but he's practically one at this point. Rudy Giuliani, a "Catholic" "Republican", has been married like six times. Ed Koch is still in the closet. Plaxico Burress shot himself.

My point here is that unless it's something really bad, something worse will happen very soon that will take Knicks' fans minds off of things. In short, LeBron can feel confident that if he keeps his nose relatively clean (and not in a Strawberry/Gooden/Hernandez/Reynolds way, let me add), he'll be better off, publicity-wise, in New York than in Cleveland.

(Quick aside, since I brought up those Mets. Was there any weirder place for a Chinese-Hawaiian-French-Canadian-American trilingual Yale grad with a dual major in French and Southeast Asian history to end up than the mid-'80s Mets? I only wish I'd known how awesome Ron Darling was during the few years he was on the A's.)