Hard after the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square in 1989, touching off bloody mayhem and massacre, Henry Kissinger was quick to absolve the Chinese government for its butchery in Beijing. Before all the blood had dried, Kissinger wrote: No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators who blocked the authorities from approaching the area in front of the main Government building.(This, by the way, is one of the reasons I voted against the eventual Democratic nominee in the primary election in 2016. Kissinger should be shunned by any human being that has a touch of humanity in them.)I mention this in order to make the point that, as badly as the National Basketball Association has handled itself in its current contretemps with China, at the very least, Adam Silver and his chickenshit high command are acting in a tradition deeply rooted in American geopolitics going back to Richard Nixon. China can do as it likes to the Chinese as long as it stocks the shelves at Walmart and loans us money.
Esquire Park Chan
For the benefit of readers who may have joined our show in progress, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted out his support for the people who have been protesting in Hong Kong against the Chinese government's new extradition law. The Rockets, you will recall, have a wide fan base in China due to the organization's employment of Yao Ming, the first genuine NBA star from that country. So, when Morey's tweet went up, it went viral in China almost immediately, spurring a national outrage that has yet to abate.