A Bulls Hat (1997)
What does a piece of wildly popular apparel say about America?
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I.
In October of 1997, at the height of his fame, and at a moment when the power and influence of the United States had arguably reached its zenith, Michael Jordan went to Paris to play in a preseason tournament sponsored by McDonald’s. It is difficult to imagine a more obvious confluence of the American story in the late 20th century, which is why the author David Halberstam began his social examination of Jordan’s power and influence, Playing for Keeps, with a snapshot of Jordan in Paris.1
At that moment, Halberstam wrote, “Michael Jordan stood at the very pinnacle of his fame.” Journalists and diplomats who traveled to remote parts of Asia and Africa, Halberstam wrote, were often greeted by young children dressed in tattered replicas of Jordan jerseys. Jordan was a Black man of modest upbringing who had achieved the highest level of human achievement, his accomplishments so staggering that scholars likened him to Michaelangelo. He was also arguably the most famous American in the world, more well-known than rock stars or movie stars or even the president of the United States.
To wear a Jordan jersey or to wear a Bulls hat in the 1990s was essentially the equivalent of draping yourself in an American flag. Those Bulls teams, wrote NPR’s Scott Simon, “seemed to evoke the energy of America.” And so to see that Bulls logo become a symbol of something fundamentally antithetical to the American ideal is so utterly Orwellian that it is difficult to believe this is reality.
II.
The short version of the story goes like this: In 2019, an immigrant named Kilmar Abrego Garcia was stopped for loitering in front of a home depot in Maryland, and interrogated by police who suspected him to be a member of the gang known as MS-13. Writes Simon:
A Prince George's County Police Department Gang Field Interview Sheet of March 28, 2019 notes that Kilmar Abrego Garcia denied being part of the gang. But he wore a Bulls cap. The officers wrote, "Wearing the Chicago Bulls hat represents [that] they are a member in good standing with the MS-13."
Of course, we do not know the truth here, and the the fact that we do not know the truth is the only relevant matter in this situation. Abrego Garcia now sits in a Salvadorian prison without the benefit of the due process necessary to determine what the truth actually is.
And the Bulls hat? How in the hell are we supposed to know if it means anything at all if we’re not willing to litigate the truth? As Simon writes, despite decades of franchise mediocrity since Jordan’s retirement, the Bulls’ brand persists as one of the most popular in the NBA. Even now, wearing a Bulls hat is often a relatively anodyne (and arguably patriotic) choice of headwear; even now, the Bulls hat endures as an evocation of the energy of America, because Michael Jordan endures as an evocation of the energy of America. And the thing about America is that it often has an uncanny ability to use symbols to deceive itself.
III.
Years ago, when this newsletter was in its nascent stages and we were at the onset of a global pandemic, I wrote this about ESPN’s 10-part Michael Jordan documentary series, The Last Dance:
So, sure, a ten-hour chronicle of Jordan’s sociopathic addiction to victory and revenge was an enjoyable diversion…but if there is one moment that will stick, one moment that will outlast the IPad gifs and the LaBradford Smith memes, one moment that felt far bigger than all that, it is the image of Jordan at the end of one particular episode, when he defends his willingness to alienate his teammates and foment fabricated grudges. Oddly, this is the discussion that proves too much for Jordan, who’s suddenly overcome by a wave of emotion that seems to rise from out of nowhere; he demands to take a break, and gets up and walks off camera.
But not before he makes one central point: If you don’t understand why he did these things, Jordan says, it’s because “you’ve never won anything.”
And whether you view that moment as a glorious zenith of the Jordan Ethos or a disturbing reveal of Jordan’s bullying pathology probably says a lot about how you view America itself.
This is the thing about Michael Jordan: Over time, he became, for many people, “a powerful cultural figure who eclipsed America’s social division,” writes author Johnny Smith in his book Jumpman: The Meaning and Making of Michael Jordan. But he was also a symbol, Smith writes, of “a country obsessed with winning and the accumulation of wealth, a nation that had individualized the idea of success and celebrated ambition for its own sake.”
Over the course of his playing career, Smith writes, Jordan attempted to sand the edges off his story so that he would appeal to everyone. He transcended race; he transcended politics. He grinned through Space Jam and a decade’s worth of McDonald’s ads. But The Last Dance reminded us that Jordan was also utterly ruthless in his obsession with victory, even if it meant lying and bullying and railroading those who were less powerful than him. “His universal popularity,” Smith writes, “depended upon America’s comfort with a world in which spectacle supplants truth and people consume deceptions like water out of a willingness to believe comfortable lies about themselves and their country.”
Smith wrote those words long before Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a story at all, and long before a Bulls hat once again found itself at the center of the American story. But here we are, witnessing a powerful man lean into a comfortable lie in which the spectacle overshadows the truth.
And yes, this newsletter is unapologetically a Halberstam-ian cult.
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To me, this is simple: Bring him back to the USA, offer due process, and if he is a gang member, send him away. Wearing a team hat would implicate millions including me.