Where are our manners?
Nov 20, 2017, 5:59 AM
LaVar Ball. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
(AP Photo/John Locher, File)
The president got into it over the weekend with the famous father of one of the three UCLA basketball players caught shoplifting in China two weeks ago.
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In case you’ve tuned in late to this controversy, President Trump, who during the campaign accused China of stealing stuff from us, still managed to get the president of China to release an American kid who was trying to steal a pair of Louis Vuitton sunglasses from them.
So, when he got back, President Trump tweeted that he thought the players ought to thank him, which they did, with LiAngelo Ball being the most profusely thankful.
“I would also like to thank President Trump and the United States government. And I’ll never make a mistake like this again.”
Except then, LiAngelo’s father, former basketball player LaVar Ball, who sells a line of sports apparel bearing his name, and also has a reality show called “Ball in the Family” on Facebook, implied this was making “a big deal out of nothing” and, he’d “seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses.”
Really? What if some Chinese kid shoplifted a pair of his brand-name $495 sneakers? That’s just not how you behave when representing our country abroad.
And Mr. Trump, who as it happens also represents our country abroad, wasn’t having it either – tweeting that maybe he should have just let LaVar’s kid go to prison.
All through this, I’m reminding myself that we are still the greatest country in the world, and heck, if the tweeting keeps those fingers away from the red button — maybe LaVar is right — what’s a pair of sunglasses?
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