Famous Folk with Our Jayhawks (Post Pics Here)
-
I really liked the pic of Clinton and Dole with our team posted by @approxinfinity. I hope someone has a pic of President Obama with our team. I vaguely recall one with Dubya, too. And then there are the ones with celebrities. My only request is that the famous person, politician, or celebrity be pictured WITH one, some, or all of our Jayhawk coaches and/or players at a KU basketball function, not just pictures of famous persons sitting in a field house seat, or punching golf balls around a celebrity fund raiser, or buddy hugging at a concert. A celebrity sitting at a game in the field house is just like any other fan. They got a ticket and went to see what it was about. Nothing special. What I hope this thread to be is a small gallery of public figures that have made an effort to be with our coaches and/or players, for whatever their reason. And I don’t want any belly aching about their politics, or their morality, or religious persuasion, or who they sleep with, or what they ingest, and so on. All famous persons have their selfish reasons for wanting to be seen with our Jayhawk basketball players and coaches. I am interested in such pictures of them being posted precisely to create a chronology of such appeals, on the one hand, and on the other a gallery that overtime shows that those appeals are inconsequential and that it is the living myth of KU Basketball that lasts and perhaps redeemed them slightly in the same small way that it redeems the rest of us slightly that participates in it. Having listened to many celebrities public comments and heard about private comments of one or two second hand, I believe that these famous folks come to these meetings, and photo ops to get something, but are often touched for the better in some way themselves, by experiencing the living myth of KU Basketball. KU Basketball is not on the way to anywhere secularly consequential. The state has its wealthy king pins and its geostrategic and geopolitical importance, but you don’t have to visit KU Basketball to exploit those. Visiting KU basketball is rather like making a pilgrimage to a monastery in Tibet. It is NOT on the way to the halls of power. They tell themselves they are being clever from a public relations standpoint, or their handlers do, but deep down they know they are coming to touch something real, something alive, something they can’t touch in Washington, New York, LA, Chicago, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Bloomington, or Lexington. They have all been to those places. They have played the exploitative sports photo op many times. The picture @approxinfinity posted elsewhere that I have taken the liberty of using to start this thread captures perfectly what I am discussing. This is not Cal and Drake and Lexington. This is happy monks in Tibet that know and live something that two strange visitors from afar have come to experience outside the spotlight. It is different than going to the other basketball programs around the country, or other sporting events, or political and charity fund raisers, or infrastructure spade turnings, or evenings honoring “X”, or posthumous tributes to dead somebodies , or celebrity roasts, or chicken dinners for grass roots organizing. There is a there there to KU Basketball–a living myth. It is bigger than the famous persons. It wants nothing from them. It will go on happily after they have gone. It is a reality and experience the famous cannot get elsewhere. Camaraderie without anyone wanting something from them. You can see this showing through the diabolical cleverness and world wearyness of expression underlying the smiles of two men who have played the game at the highest level for a long time and have the scars to prove it. They are the brilliant, searching wanderers in the presence of those in touch daily with what the wanderers realize has just been kindled, or rekindled in them–an awareness that there really is something good left with no end beyond itself. You reach out to it, even selfishly, and it reaches back. We cannot change the world with KU basketball, but we can change a few of the people in the world that do change the world, when they are willing to come to us. Maybe it won’t do much good. But it might. Put their pictures here.
-
