DURSTIN: What’s Up With the Cavs’ Spencer Hawes & Obama Toilet Paper?

By Larry Durstin

Something happened at a Cleveland Cavaliers press conference last week that rarely, if ever, occurs in the sports world: a question was asked regarding a player’s political views and how they might affect interaction with his teammates.

Cavalier general manager David Griffin was asked – by my great and good friend Delvis Valentine – what role would the fact that the newly acquired Spencer Hawes had toilet paper in his residence that has a picture of President Barack Obama on each sheet play in team chemistry. Aside from the near-certain probability that the words “toilet paper” have never been used in a sports press conference, the political inference is what made the query unique and memorable.

My first reaction upon learning that Hawes – an outspoken political right-winger – had been obtained by the Cavs was to post “Hawes is a bigger asshole than Curt Schilling. What’s next? Ted Nugent playing the national anthem.” (Note: As is my policy, any opportunity to take a pot shot at the insufferable Schilling must be seized. That’s just common sense.)

Assuming that the majority of the black NBA players support Obama, the question relates to how these players would respond to the political comments of Hawes and his predilection for commander-in-chief toilet paper.  But this incident has little or nothing to do with politics, since it can be argued that few NBA players – or young pro athletes in general – know much of anything about the parameters of political discourse and probably couldn’t pick Joe Biden or Rand Paul out of a lineup.

No, the expressed unease has nothing to do with tax policy or abortion or global warming or ideology. The issue behind the “concern” over Hawes’ bathroom tissue is race – or more specifically, how the black players on the Cavs relate to this “prejudiced” white guy.

Absent any racist or mean-spirited behavior on Hawes’ part (and assuming the image of Obama wasn’t blatantly racist), my sense is that there’s no reason for anyone to necessarily attach bigotry to his behavior. After all, the use of president’s images on toilet paper goes back to LBJ and Nixon – both of whom were regularly depicted in a variety of art forms as having, among other things, intercourse with other men. The practice of vilifying presidents and other public figures as Nazis, child molesters, sub-humans or you-name-it has existed in one form or another since the Founding Fathers.

Based on what I’ve heard and read about Hawes, my guess is that he is a fairly engaged political observer who happens to be a conservative and was having some fun at the expense of one of his Obama-favoring  teammates and chose to do so in a frat-boy kind of way. On its face, this is no big deal and only becomes so if viewed through the prism of race, rather than political preference or just plain adolescent silliness.

One of the problems I have with a number of my progressive friends is that they choose to see any and all criticism of Obama as being racially motivated. Obviously, some of the hatred of Obama is fueled by racism. Only a fool would doubt that. But does anyone really think that if Hillary Clinton were president and had passed health care, appointed “liberal” Supreme Court justices or promoted progressive social, immigration and environmental issues that she wouldn’t be subjected to the most brutal attacks and characterizations by her opponents?

Anyone who believes that is in for a rude awakening when the next president, Republican or Democrat, is elected and then subjected to barrages of vicious criticism by the opposition and its supporters. Focusing on race is easy, though often misguided. Spencer Hawes is not playing the race card, he’s playing politics – which, by definition, can be downright inhuman.

 

 

Larry Durstin is an independent journalist who has covered politics and sports for a variety of publications and websites over the past 20 years. He was the founding editor of the Cleveland Tab and an associate editor at the Cleveland Free Times. Durstin has won 12 Ohio Excellence in Journalism awards, including six first places in six different writing categories. He is the author of the novel The Morning After John Lennon Was Shot. LarryDurstinATyahoo.com

 

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