Jeremy Lin and the Challenges of Stardom in the Age of the Internet

Charles Pierce with some insight here that transcends Jeremy Lin.  He writes:

The Accelerated Age has taken the phenomenon out of the phenomenon of being a phenomenon. It used to have some build to it. It used to take a while. Even the simultaneous ascendancy of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird seems today as though it came to us all by wireless radio. Now, anything great that happens suddenly becomes so freighted with instant significance that the essential parts of it that are not crushed entirely are simply buried. In the case of Jeremy Lin, it took almost no time at all for the phenomenon to become commodified. He's already become a self-contained universe of images, most of which he did not seek, and none of which are under his control. He's been made into a vessel into which people have placed the precious illusions that they'd otherwise keep protected in bubble wrap and romance, deep in their childhood hearts. He's come to symbolize everything about sports that nostalgics need sports to symbolize. And he's trying to learn how to succeed as a point guard at the highest possible level of his sport — and that has to be the hardest part for him.

Can't he just be a player now, for a while, anyway? Can't he learn how not to turn over the ball nine times in a game? Can't he learn that he can't just pound the ball on the perimeter the way he does? Can't he have some space to figure out for himself and his teammates how things are going to be for the Knicks when they get their entire roster back together and everybody has to adjust, especially him? These are not easy lessons. Can't people simply refrain for a while from using him and his success as an excuse to take their pet theories about America out for a walk around the various green rooms and radio studios?

Of course not.

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