Bobby Brown, a professional NBA player with the Houston Rockets, has secured a position for himself in the Moron Hall of Fame a recent trip to China after he decided to improve the Great Wall of China by first drawing his name on the stone and then bragging about it. In fairness, it was just in chalk but it was still a uniquely stupid and disrespectful act.
Brown recently signed with the Rockets and seemed to celebrate by defacing ancient landmarks. For a guy who hasn’t played professionally in six years, a degree of caution might have been warranted to make up for the lack of intellect or judgment.
We have previously discussed the destructive narcissism of tourists who write their names on historic locations or art. This includes the Chinese tourist who wrote on an ancient Egyptian temple or the Russian who carved his name into the Colosseum. An unidentified 55-year-old man from Missouri snapped the finger off a 14th or 15th century marble masterpiece when he decided to measure it by grabbing the hand. Two California women (again strangely allowed to go unidentified) were arrested after carving their names into the Colosseum. Then there was a 126-year-old statue of Dom Sebastian that crashed to the ground and shattered after man climbed on top of its pedestal to take a selfie with the 16th century Portuguese King.
As is the case with many of these certifiable idiots, they not only deface art or landmarks but then often brag about it. Brown posted the picture and added “Had a blast at the Great Wall of China today.”
Brown was immediately denounced for his actions and hurriedly posted an apology:
“I had never been, it was my first time. I wrote my name on the wall in chalk. I saw different writings — I didn’t mean any harm by it. I made a mistake. I could have just put my hand over it and erased it. It will never happen again.
“I’ve been playing in China for three years now and I have the utmost respect for the Chinese culture, and the way of living here. I pretty much adapted, coming from the states, here for three years. My teammates, the fans in Shenzhen and the fans all over were great to me, and I just want to sincerely apologize for that.”
I am unmoved. You are an adult. How much respect do you have for Chinese culture when you want to deface it? The Beijing Municipal Administration of Tourism impose a fine of up to $1,000, which is of course a meaningless amount to a professional athlete. However, it would at least create a record. Community service cleaning the Great Wall would have been more poignant.
John, I agree with you 99 times out of 100, but on this one I have to disent. Cut him a little slack.
I agree that defacing significant ancient landmarks is not the best habit to get into bit his apology seemed heartfelt. It read as a comment from a young man (albeit one old enough to know better) and not a PR firm or his agent. And it was just chalk, which would have either worn away or been washed away in the next rain.
We all do stupid and regretful things. I don’t thing this incident raises much more criticism than a virtual slap in the back of the head and a ‘you knucklehead’. It certainly isn’t as serious as some of the examples you gave that caused permanent damage.
Give him a pass this time.
All right and I’m sticking my oar in here. As soon as he apologizes not to China but to all the young people who look up to sports heroes and copy their every move. That was the real damage. China took care of it themselves as they should have. Will we do the same?
Not while ‘nice try here’s an A for trying it your way’ and ‘social promotions’ are in vogue. Come to think of it the country probably owes Bobby an apology. He followed in some one else’s footsteps that’s how we learn to walk.
So Bobby….on behalf of the thinking people of the country. Our apologies . The other half? They won’t have a clue what was just said.
Comey gave little Bobby a ‘good try’ passing grade and a ‘social promotion?’ As I recall he did the same fo Hillary. He also said the FBI only prepares cases doesn’t file charge nor judge them. Comey is the last person I would believe. He’s going to die with the tar still stuck to his skin. Comey also fails to realize he’s supposed to set an example. What a sad poor excuse for a public ‘servant’?
So much for the highly trained experts of the adminstative progressive form of government. A pox on their failed theory.
JT, oh, stop picking on Bobby Brown. He has apologized after leaving the graffiti on the Great Wall and he has said that he “didn’t mean any harm” and that he “made a[n] honest mistake.”
FBI Director James Comey has even weighed in on this matter and has given his official legal conclusion: “I see no evidence that Mr. Brown intended to cause any harm, and while I personally disagree with Mr. Brown’s decision to deface the Great Wall, since there is no intent to cause harm in this case, I believe that the matter should be dropped.”
So there you have it. Let it go, JT.
The graffiti at Horseshoe Canyon, Utah may go back as far as 13,000 years. Dudes and Dudettes, graffiti has been with us a long time.
Not the same context Paul. It had a different purpose 13,000 years ago, check out the artwork.
Unless you find “Grog loves Sheena” in a heart, then I give up.
slohrss29 – we cannot decipher Horseshoe Canyon. For all we know it could be “Billy love Fred.”
Sum Ting, I do feel he is arrogant and that he can do what he wants. I think he could care less about being an American.
Did he have permission to graffiti the wall? If yes, please show us the contract. If no, then he violated property Rights.
Another case of an proletariat “only one” who thinks he can do what us plebes cannot.
It’s the “I’m an American, and I can do as I please” arrogance that results in this sort of reprehensible mischief.
Nah, it’s the I was here thing. It has been going on from the beginning of time. The first hand prints on cave walls attests to that. It is our value system that has changed. When nobody owned the cave walls it was expression. As soon as people started owning things, it became defacing public and private property. The solution lies somewhere in-between. Graffiti can be an art form and a defacement. In actuality a chalk scribble and a selfie is a viable compromise. A heart with two lovers’ initials carved into the old oak tree is what?
No, listen to Sum Ting Weely Wong, it’s the great American athlete thing. Don’t see many great American scientists or the like doing that.
hey, thats GANG graffiti…. Because ALL graffiti is gang graffiti, right?? The public perception of graffiti is shaped by media force that just wants to make a dramatic story. Subtle bias is projected on the public, bored, scared people take on this uninformed bias without thinking, and then “all graffiti is bad” or “all graffiti is gang-related” etc.etc.etc.
This chalk thing he did would BARELY pass as a tag. It is definitely not graffiti. More of a barely stylized block-letter signature. In a city with actual graff, he’d be considered a toy. Graffiti artists actually have a code of ethics on what surfaces are game, and what surfaces are not ok. The Great Wall of China, is not ok. Schools, churches, businesses, homes, historical monuments, etc…People who tag or paint on these surfaces are usually immediately frowned upon, sorted out, and considered FOOLS by the graff world. Artists of quality who work in the world of graff actually hate on this kind of a story because it gives the media a chance to unfairly demonize it. There are INSANELY gifted graff artists out there in the world; What this guy did, is NOT graff. The media needs to be whipped indefinitely for exaggerating details and being lazy.
Graffiti from time immemorial turns into archeology. The grime of time and the marks left centuries ago make the great monuments of the world more than what they were when built. The chalk idea, perhaps more controlled such as you buy a ticket, get a photo taken, with your name chalked on the monument, and then you have to wash it off would work. Kilroy must be there. If Kilroy pays for the experience and leaves the place as he/she found it then why not?
There’s a famous restaurant in Paris, perhaps more than one, where the glass panels that separate the private booths and the mirrors on the walls are covered in graffiti made by the diamond rings the rich fat cats gave to their mistresses before they went a boinking. At first it probably made the owners cry but now it draws in more customers at higher prices.
Not in context. Guess you could call the cave paintings of Lascaux graffiti too, but there is that context issue.
slohrss29 – I would accept Lascaux as graffiti. Very good graffiti, but graffiti none the less.
It’s CHALK – get over it – next rain it will be gone. Damn – you have nothing better to talk about???
Put him under gun threat. Bend him over. Put a tatoo on his rear end which says: Great Wall.
It’s chalk. Go easy on him. No big deal.
It is a big deal, Don. This guy was not following the cultural norms while in a foreign nation. That is a very dangerous form of behavior because sovereign nations do not have the same laws. It should not be expected that the U.S. would bail out an american citizen who broke the laws of a foreign land based on ignorance or arrogance.
Also this is one example of foreigners with greater incomes than the nations’ citizens proportionately receive light fines since in this case a thousand dollars could have crippled a person of small means who resides in China and their system punishes to that level of income. But then we run into inequality in the application of justice if a foreigner is punished greater than a citizen. Jail would be a better alternative since they suffer at least in close approximation to what others must endure in their punishment.
One of the reasons Singapore is so clean is the use of he bamboo whip. To describe. if the penalty is 100 lashes it’s meted out at ten a month. Takes that long for the previous to heal. Bamboo has tiny microscopic fish hook fibers when crushed or shredded. Still it beats their other punishment which is the death penalty.
The lesson is driven home population wide and as a result the city is clean. Crime is next to non existent. They don’t waste a lot of money on jails and prisons. I thought about the ME group who welcome death. What if they had to get ten lashes a month for ten years. No hope of dying just ten years of agony.
Why only ten or so a month? No one inthe past ever lasted the full penalty term. Our sociologists have a lot to learn.
I thought punishment wasn’t a deterrent? Maybe they should have tried the bamboo whip before they wrote that?
At the very least he used chalk instead of inscribing his graffiti in the stones: unlike so many. I suspect if he damaged, rather than defaced, the wall the penalty might include jail time.
Dude is a cliche of the “ugly American” abroad. Chinese should have sent him to a re education camp.
Please do not forget Chicago in your list of cities that need a thorough scrubbing !! DMD
It is a shame it wasn’t in Singapore. The Chinese go easy one bullet and send the family the bill for the cartidge. In Singapore first offense is ten lashe’s with a crushed or shredded bamboo whip for littering and that included passing up some one else’s rubbish. Other than the doofus American Embassy employees kid that key scratched a car I haven’t heard of any one dumb enough to test them. Don’t know about China in that much detail but I did notice the streets by comparison were very clean while Singapore looked like a new penny. Maybe we should emulate them starting with San Jose, CA and Houston TX..