Media Hype for Lin Stumbles on Race

You don’t have to be an economics graduate from Harvard like Jeremy Lin to do the math on the media explosion about Linsanity

he suddenly celebrated Lin is a four-fer: a God-fearing, Asian-American, Ivy League benchwarmer who has changed the fortunes of the New York Knicks . That’s a lot of glorious idiosyncrasy in one camera-ready package, especially in a town teeming with copy-hungry journalists.       

Add in the fact that he is an actual team player wearing a Knicks uniform and it’s like spotting a unicorn playing point guard at Madison Square Garden.       
Since cracking the starting lineup because of an injury and other unusual circumstances, Lin, a 23-year-old, undrafted, unheralded, twice-cut player, has torn up the league, setting records for a first-time starter.       

Unfortunately for Lin and the rest of us, the over-the-top coverage that followed ended over the line, exposing underlying racist tropes that still lurk in the id of American sports journalism, and by extension, the rest of us.       
From the start, his run threatened the tabloid supply of puns and superlatives. “Lincredible!” shouted The New York Post on Feb. 11. And because tabloids have a back page and front page to shout from, we’ve sometimes been treated to a double dose of wordplay: “Lin and a Prayer” was the cover headline on The Daily News one day last week, while the back page blared “Just Lin Time.”       

But all the froth and fun started to curdle, first on Twitter — the Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock tweeted a crude reference about Lin’s anatomy and the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. suggested that Lin was getting attention because of his ethnicity, not his accomplishments — and then in the tabloid press — on Wednesday, perhaps at a loss after several breathless days of punning, The Post went with the unfortunate “Amasian!”       
The combination of Lin’s ethnicity and accomplishments created some excess, but no one could have predicted how low it might go. On Saturday, an article on ESPN’s mobile site recycled an ancient and blatantly offensive ethnic slur, and in the process suggested that some corners of sports journalism remained a backwater in the culture, a place untouched by a history of civil rights struggle and decades of progress. ESPN quickly changed the headline and has fired the person who wrote it, but not before all but ruining a sweet sporting story.       

1. "Linsightful Lessons of Linsanity" -- Huffington Post
2. "New York Knicks Legend Willis Reed Gives Ringing Lin-dorsement" -- ESPN
3. "Lin-credible That Race Is Being Raised in NBA Again" -- Philly.com
4. "Lin-conceivable Puns Have Run Out for Jeremy Lin?" -- USA Today
5. "A Good Linvestment: Five Pun-Based Endorsements for Jeremy Lin" -- SB Nation
6. "American-Born Linderella Is the Pride of China" -- NPR
7. "Just Lin Time: Knicks Phenom Saving Season" -- Chicago Tribune
8. "A 'Lin'spiring Story" -- Yale Daily News
9. "Lin-vestigating History" -- ESPN
10. "Lin Your Face: Jeremy Lin Impressed by Witty Linatics" -- Gothamist
11. "Amasian!" -- New York Post
12. "Minyanville Presents: The Jeremy Lin-dex" -- Minyanville
13. "A Lesson in Lin-guistics: The Best (And Worst) Jeremy Lin Puns" -- Time
14. "We'll Lin and Bear It Today" -- NorthJersey.com
15. "Jeremy Lin's 'Linning' Streak and 8 Unbelieveable Active Runs Around the NBA" -- Bleacher Report
16. "Is Super Lintendo All-Hype or the Real Deal?" -- The Renegade Rip
17. "Lin-sational Knicks Knock Off Lakers" -- TucsonCitizen.com
18. "Linsanity: Need Some More Linnovative Puns?" -- City News Toronto
19. "To Linfinity and Beyond" -- News12.com
20. "ThrilLIN'" -- New York Post

i heard an interview just this morning i heard an interview with Lin beeging people in Taiwan to leave his relatives alone.

journalists are camped out at his relatives houses