Whitlock on LeBron

Big Sexy’s got a good one up on the Vogue cover.  Agree with his takes or not, Whitlock’s probably the best columnist working right now.
Why I posted this–Whitlock raises a point that I hadn’t considered, and it’s a point worth taking in.  If LeBron has conciously done things to appear dangerous, to play into an image, why be upset with Annie Leibowitz (sp?) for capturing that?  That’s more than a fair point, though I’m not about to define Bron Bron by his tats.  Why people wear tattoos in the first place, though, is something worth considering.
I wasn’t angered by the Vogue cover, though I don’t think it was a good look.  I thought the shot was tired and the look on his face a bit out of place on the cover of that magazine.  Did I immediately see King Kong?  Not exactly.  Did I have to see the King Kong picture to see the resemblence?  No.  There’s a reason Leibowitz wanted LeBron to make that face.  She’ll have to explain what emotion she wanted to come across.  From my vantage, there aren’t a lot of plausible possibilities on what that emotion was, and none come close to what I’d look like if I had a pretty woman on my arm.
Maybe the folks at Vogue didn’t mean anything by it.  That’s enough to stop me from being upset.  Doesn’t mean it was to be done, though.