Quite a scene Monday night in Oakland when Golden State Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob was repeatedly booed down by a crowd of about 19,000 during a ceremony honoring Hall of Famer former player Chris Mullins.
Warriors fans, as the linked articles report, have plenty of reasons to complain and to boo — and the fact they were gathered in one place to make their feelings known, with hundreds of thousands of people watching the ceremony shows they didn’t waste their Golden opportunity.
So, I thought: What if we all had such an opportunity? Consider our state government, for example. Almost all incumbents will be reelected this year — count on it — even though almost all Californians are sick and tired of an ineffective political process that has blocked almost all tax, spending and pension reforms. Would voters dare boo incumbents? Not likely.
In San Francisco, would residents, much less his deputies, boo their sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, who pleaded to a lesser domestic violence charge, a crime, after stonewalling for months about his behavior toward his wife and other women? Not likely — although you gotta like the moxie of SF Mayor Ed Lee who is today trying to force the sheriff to resign.
Would you boo the banker who turned down your application for a home loan? Probably not. Or the corporate boss who refused to listen to employees’ plea for a raise, while using the profits to pay off debt service from foolish business ventures that went south? Don’t think so.
So sports is one of the last places we can let “them” have it — for all the broken promises, the frustrations, the big money and the escalating prices “they” have brought on.
Sigh. In that murky light, waiting for someone, somehow, to make things right, it just feels … good to start booing.
