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Crying Jordan is the only one we acknowledge
If you’re a newspaper in Malawi, apparently
Lmaoooooooooo Malawian newspaper really used that pic of all pics. Ati "photograph BBC" Dead dead dead pic.twitter.com/kPIXMoGqbf
— 1/4 Bearded Kinda Bae (@daliballz) July 27, 2016
On Tuesday, your people at The Undefeated broke a little news. Michael Jordan, for basically the first time ever, decided to talk about a social issue. The statement itself, never mind the stance he took, was news because arguably the greatest player in the history of the NBA effectively never does this. So, the exclusive spread quickly.
Apparently, it also got as far as the east African nation of Malawi, which was once an English colony. The national soccer team refers to itself as “The Flames,” which is very dope, as most African squads’ nicknames are. Yet, if we were still in an era in which polite society used the term “third world,” this nation would qualify as such. And when a friend forwarded me this picture from a newspaper there, I couldn’t help but laugh. The paper in question is called The Nation. If you want to catch up on Malawi politics (the state of which is not good, by the way), here you go. Though a search for Jordan’s face on the site turned up nothing.
But I refuse to believe this picture was a mistake. I’d like to believe that, although an error, it was a cognizant choice to match an emotional Jordan photo with what was an emotional story. In the news business, people do it constantly in print: take an out-of-context headshot of a famous person and stick it with a story that sort of portrays a similar feeling to whatever is being expressed in the text. I’ve done it a million times, myself.
But without being overly culturally insensitive to the fact that things like this tend to get lost in translation, this is completely hilarious. To go from news photo, to ridiculous pop-culture symbol, back to news photo on the other side of the earth is a perfect development for the meme that will never die.