So give it up for LeBron James.
No such thing here for James, who has shoes to sell and a movie about to hit theaters around the globe. The NBA itself has had a difficult enough time avoiding rhetorical land mines since this broke, and the business that is LeBron James is tromping around in similar fashion, appearing like nothing less than a sellout after all the good deeds and positive efforts undertaken here.
And that's the part that has all the pernicious chuds pointing the finger of hypocrisy in an attempt to undermine and invalidate James. These are the people for whom empathy is undesirable, not all human beings are equal and real social justice is anathema. Rather than acknowledge that charitable works and concern for marginalized people aren't a zero-sum all-or-nothing undertaking, they instead apply petty and cynical whataboutisms to congratulate themselves on believing that all of it is a waste of time because their own lives are just fine.
Where one side may cling to a fantasy of James' star power breaking through the state-censored news and social media to shine a light on injustice, emboldening the Chinese people to throw off the yoke of oppression and weaken the hold of a brutal totalitarian government, another side can't wait to get to pretend that no concern for any downtrodden people anywhere is worth it.
It's too bad that James let this happen, especially after five days to consider everything and get it right -- or at least more right than he did. It was never going to be perfect, but he could've better tried to articulate an appreciation for freedom and human rights everywhere while discussing openly the conflicts and hypocrisies in which all of us engage every day when our country's economy is so inextricably linked to that of China.