LeBron goes ape-sh*t for the camera. 

My bet is you've already seen -- or at least heard of -- the current Vogue  cover (above) featuring tattooed, muscle-bound b-baller LeBron James. In and of itself, the notion of a Black athlete on the cover of a fashion magazine cover featuring "best bodies" isn't a big deal.

The controversy is in the execution; the "blue-eyed devil," as Brother Malcolm once would have said, is in the details. James is snarling and baring his teeth like a roaring beast. He's clutching a svelte, smiling blonde with one hand and dribbling a ball with the other. Of course, there will be those who will counter the growing outcry over this latest indignity targeting The Race as flimy, hypersensitive and wrong-headed, as crying wolf; "there's no racism there at all." Below is an old poster for "King Kong." You be the judge.

King Kong with a thing for Fay Wray - Movie Poster (c. 1933) 

The fact is there were lots of ways to photograph James: dapper, well-dressed, classy; on the court, doin' his thing; with a sexy woman, or several, of different ethnicities. The options were many. But Vogue chose, arguably, one of the most offensive and incendiary images it possibly could: the Black, male athlete as brute beast. The Black man as King Kong, White woman in hand, only this time as a smiling, willing companion. The photographer aped (pun intended) the old M. Cooper/E. Schoedsack poster right down to the poses of his/her subjects; right down to the silk charmeuse, slinky bias-cut dress so evocative of the 1920s and '30s (the original "King Kong" was released in 1933) and the hair color of the model (Fay Wray was a blonde as well). The Vogue photograph is, in fact, so faithful a fascimile of the vintage poster, it's highly probable that the iconic image served as the inspiration, if not the template, for the cover shot.

The message/image is all too clear, the comparisons inevitable, the stereotype as old as White supremacy itself: Black men are gorillas. Animalistic. Brute savages. And dem big, Black bucks jus' lubbs dem sum Waa-aaat wimminzes! (Well, that last one certainly appears to be true! )

Is this a message deliberately, cynically calculated to inflame the passions of White men, with several Democratic primaries still pending and a presidential election in the offing? With White women literally swooning at Barack Obama rallies? It wouldn't surprise me in the least -- particularly since the White, male demographic, somewhat unexpectedly, has been voting for Obama instead of Clinton in recent primaries. I mean we know how antagonistically and viciously White men react, and have always reacted, to the perceived superior sexual potency of Black men and White male feelings of inadequacy. The book Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America is proof enough of that. And there's no coincidence that sales in penis enlargement nostrums and the vasodilators Viagra, Cialis and Levitra are booming at a time when more and more White women are openly pursuing -- and being pursued by -- Black men.

It's too bad so many younger Black folk have so little race consciousness, so little understanding/grasp of our history, so little political savvy or self-pride that they constantly allow themselves to be manipulated by, or collude with, the media in this manner to denigrate and ridicule our people -- from that boob-tube coon Flava Flav, to Bobby Brown talking on MTV about digging a "doody bubble" out of Whitney Houston's butt (crack constipation, one supposes) as an expression of marital devotion, to that kickboxing fool in Japan, Bob Sapp - who, I'm convinced, understands full well what he's doing: pandering to ugly stereotypes about the Black man as mindless, brute savages -- in a word, a gorilla. After washing out of professional football, Sapp has made a fortune in Japan by calculatingly becoming that ugly, damaging stereotype reified.

Check this out. This is Bobby Sapp is unable to control himself upon being shown a photo of one of his kickboxing opponents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__il-LxDlI

(Is there a way to embed video on this crappy website?)

Note the banana. He's a raging beast. But he's childish, feeble-minded enough to be easily subdued and handcuffed by a single, physically unassuming policewoman. His moniker, in fact, is "THE BEAST," which he wears emblazoned across his backside in what are akin to Speedos, cut tight to accentuate his relatively small "package." (Can you say "steroids"?)

I wish I could find another video I've seen, of Sapp at a Japan zoo, doing a similar schtick in front of a gorilla cage, flexing his muscles, roaring at the poor, imprisoned creature and pounding his chest like one himself -- all the while, again, cramming bananas into his mouth, eyes bulging. This guy gets paid big bucks for being a modern-day sellout, an animalized Steppinfetchit. He was, in fact, recently in the U.S. for a bout, photographed alongside Mike Tyson.

"The Beast" is a household name in Japan. He makes a killing off commercial endorsements and kitsch like this.

The Beast, Sapp's kickboxing persona, is big, dumb brute with the mind of a child, but the real man is a reasonably articulate, clearly business-savvy performer.

That there is much discussion and criticism of the "Vogue" cover is appropriate. We shouldn't tolerate this sh*t. James should be castigated -- and schooled. The man is about as wretched in this regard as rapper DMX, who, when recently queried about Barack Obama shamelessly admitted he'd never heard of the man and repeatedly mocked him because of his first name -- this from a mindless, narcissistic, gutter-mouth, gangsta wannabe whose name consists of three letters -- and not a vowel among them.

Go figure.