After a few impressive games Jeremy Lin has become a national sensation. The New York Knicks player wowed even non-basketball fans during a February 10th game against the Lakers when he scored 38 points and had seven assists; the Knicks won that game 92 to 85.

But the backlash against all this “Lin-sanity” started almost immediately, according to teacher, director, actor, writer and general man about town JC Aevaliotis. He’s “here to rescue us from a Lin-sane aslyum of stupid puns and stupider cultural analysis,” says Paper Machete host Christopher Piatt. Read an excerpt or listen below: 

Boxer Floyd Mayweather Tweeted directly from our national id with this post on Tuesday [February 12]: ‘Jeremy Lin is a good player, but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.’

This sparked indignant protests that Lin’s explosion into our national consciousness had nothing to do with race, and everything to do with basketball. ‘Oh, Jeremy Lin’s Asian?’ our national ego got to say. ‘I hadn’t really noticed, what with me being busy paying attention to the content of his character and all that.’

Mayweather’s an a**hole, but he’s also probably at least a little bit right. That’s what id’s are for. Race seems to find its way into a lot of our conversations about sports, or sport seems to find its way into a lot of our conversations about race. Either way, Jeremy Lin stepped right off the Knick’s bench and onto the sports and race mobius strip this week.

And whether you think sport reflects everything good about America, or everything bad about America, Jeremy Lin, this Taiwanese-American kid from Palo Alto, Calif. proves you right.

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