Jonathan Zimmerman: Where's the Outrage About Lebron James's Salary?
[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”]
In 1930, when the baseball star Babe Ruth earned the then-unheard-of sum of $80,000, a reporter asked him why he should make more than the president of the United States, Herbert Hoover.
“Why not?” Ruth famously replied. “I had a better year than he did.”...
Hoover earned $75,000 in 1930 – five thousand less than the Babe, who hit his 500th career home run the previous summer. But the reporter’s question implied that neither of them should be making that much money, when so much of the country was mired in poverty.
And that was the context missing from this summer’s hoopla surrounding basketball superstar LeBron James, which concluded last night with an hour-long TV special on ESPN. After months of speculation – would he stay in Cleveland? would he go to Chicago? – James announced that he will sign with the Miami Heat. He’ll join Heat guard Dwyane Wade – who decided to stay in Miami – and Toronto Raptors power forward Chris Bosh, the Heat’s other big-time free-agent acquisition....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
In 1930, when the baseball star Babe Ruth earned the then-unheard-of sum of $80,000, a reporter asked him why he should make more than the president of the United States, Herbert Hoover.
“Why not?” Ruth famously replied. “I had a better year than he did.”...
Hoover earned $75,000 in 1930 – five thousand less than the Babe, who hit his 500th career home run the previous summer. But the reporter’s question implied that neither of them should be making that much money, when so much of the country was mired in poverty.
And that was the context missing from this summer’s hoopla surrounding basketball superstar LeBron James, which concluded last night with an hour-long TV special on ESPN. After months of speculation – would he stay in Cleveland? would he go to Chicago? – James announced that he will sign with the Miami Heat. He’ll join Heat guard Dwyane Wade – who decided to stay in Miami – and Toronto Raptors power forward Chris Bosh, the Heat’s other big-time free-agent acquisition....