The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the nation’s foremost professional race-card player, said billionaire sports franchise owner Dan Gilbert was treating mere multi-multimillionaire LeBron James like “a runaway slave.” Jackson was responding to an angry letter Gilbert released to the public, specifically addressed to Cleveland Cavaliers fans, in the wake of James’s announcement that he would leave Gilbert’s NBA team to sign with the Miami Heat, and to Gilbert’s later statements to the Associated Press. In a press release from his Rainbow/PUSH organization, Jackson said of Gilbert, “He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship—between business partners—and LeBron honored his contract.” The absurdity of such language ought to be obvious, as is the obvious irony (and disgrace) of a Christian minister using incendiary language to criticize someone for . . . using incendiary language. Also disgraceful is Jackson’s imputation of race-based motives to a person who has far more obvious reasons to be angry at the object of his screed: money, and lots of it, plus extremely hurt feelings over the sense that

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