Score one for the White Man

With the Denver Nuggets advancing to their first Western Conference Championship series in 24 years, national attention has fallen to Chauncey Billups, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Anderson. For Anthony and Billups, such notoriety is nothing new and not unexpected, but for the player known simply as “Birdman”, the reasons behind his meteoric rise in popularity have become the subject of enormous Media speculation:
Has he become a number one fan favorite in Denver because he successfully returned, to the NBA, after serving a two year suspension for violating the League’s substance abuse policy?
Is the number one selling Nugget jersey his, because of the flamboyant cocketiel hairdo he sports?
Do basketball fans, at Denver’s Pepsi Center, stand and flap their arms every time the Birdman blocks an opponent’s shot, because of the giant wing tattoos gracing both his underarms?
And has Anderson become a national phenomenon because he slams home monster jams, on offensive rebounds, and comes up flexing his biceps and strutting down the court?
The answers are; yes, yes, yes and yes!
But, there’s another reason that some people are saying, that basketball fans all across America have gone crazy for the Birdman and it’s the same reason that Kris Allen beat out Adam Lambert on American Idol. They’re both White, straight and come to the big stage with small town values.
Hollywood, the Idol judges and the liberal elite studio audience preferred the single, metrosexual Lambert, but voters chose the Christian, married guy from Conway, Ark. The NBA is replete with great players that generate tons of publicity and almost without exception, they are black. Meanwhile, the vast majority of fans are white, and in the era of Obama, Oprah, Kobe, LaBron, Chauncey and Carmello, Chris Anderson is apparently a hero that they can better relate to – and his “bird” attitude is oddly reminiscent of that whole American eagle thing as well. Patriotic/red-state Americans need stars too and now they’ve got a couple of new ones.