File photo.

Last week, Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs wrote a fantastic response to Sports Illustrated’s Thomas Lake, who penned a scathing, fart-sniffing letter to Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan about what he supposedly owed his former high school basketball coach, Pop Herring, who suffers from a mental illness, among other things. You can read Lake’s humongous pat on the back to himself here, and then I’m sure you can track down the online fundraiser that he started to really stick it to Jordan. If it helps Lake sleep better at night, then good for him, but I’m more curious about what it all represents.

At some point in the last few years, it became a trend to hate Jordan. As I pointed out during the NBA Lockout last summer, players picked him as the bad guy, because – aside from maybe Mark Cuban – Jordan is the most recognizable owner. But they also obviously picked him because he actually played the game, and they felt that he should have had their backs. I wrote that he shouldn’t, because A) he’s already done so much for paving the way to fortune for the league’s stars and B) he’s an owner now, and he has to worry about himself and his team.

Now, if people want to argue that they hate him because he sucks as an owner, I can get on board with that. However, the idea that he owes certain people something because he’s rich is just lazy. And yesterday, our friends at Buzzfeed found something even lazier.

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If you’re having trouble thinking of a whiter, more joyless thing than “Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly watching a baseball game together”, try adding “and doing the wave during a Yankees loss at Yankee Stadium” to the end of it.

Their reactions are pitch-perfect. Trump watches everyone have fun, then does a terrible version of the wave himself about five seconds too late. O’Reilly keeps time with the wave but only does it with his index finger, rolling his eyes with the rest of his body as it passes.

I can’t really blame Bill for this one. The wave is dumb, and my reaction to it at games isn’t much different. Actually, wait, I can totally blame them for this. After it was done, O’Reilly chastised President Obama for letting the wave happen in what’s SUPPOSED to be a free country, and Trump took credit for starting it. That felt good!

[h/t to Outside The Boxscore]

Junior Seau, presumably staring off at the farm that NBC think he lives on.

NBC has gone to great lengths to put together an informative country-by-country breakdown of the 2012 Summer Olympics, with each nation’s athletic history being profiled on the network’s Olympics website. For example: did you know that Liechtenstein does not have any athletes at the Summer Olympics and, therefore, will not contend for any medals? That’s some incredible insight right there.

Other countries obviously have a significant wealth of information available, and that’s great, because most of us probably don’t know a lot about a territory like, say, American Samoa. So what would NBC have us learn about such a place and the great athletes that it has produced?

Consists of seven small islands about halfway between Hawaii and Sydney. Located 2,300 miles southwest of Honolulu in the South Pacific Ocean and is the most southerly of all lands under American sovereignty.

Became a U.S. territory in 1900 by a treaty with the United Kingdom and Germany. Until 1951, was under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Navy. American Samoans are considered U.S. nationals, not U.S. citizens. Since 1981, has had a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The most famous person from American Samoa is the former Miami Dolphins linebacker Junior Seau, who now is now retired after playing for the New England Patriots.

I guess “retired” isn’t false. I’m just not sure that “is now retired” is the right way to describe Seau’s current situation. Perhaps “who retired after playing for the New England Patriots” might have been the better phrase to avoid using key words like “shotgun” and “chest”, but every site’s editor has his own style, so who am I to nitpick?

Meanwhile, if you’re in the market for a beachside home, Fox News is reporting with some great hyperlinking that Seau’s Oceanside house is for sale for $2.3 million. It’s a beautiful home, but you will have to get used to ESPN filming crying women outside of it every few weeks.

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There are plenty of things wrong with the world to be freaking out over right now, but I suppose that if you’re a big Summer Olympics fan who loathes hats, you could make a case for being most upset about the new Ralph Lauren U.S. Olympics get-ups (above) that were revealed this week. I don’t see what the big deal is. Yeah, white pants are always dangerous with Michael Phelps splashing that Subway avocado mess all over the place, and sure, they’re preppy, but our athletes should look nice.

But there are plenty of people bitching and moaning this week that our American athletes should not be wearing berets, the hat of the French. At the front of that complaint line is the adorable panel of Fox & Friends, as they just cannot believe that someone would make our finest examples of Americans stand before the rest of the world in another country’s headgear. Absolutely deplorable, Ralph Lauren.

And before any of you complain – if you even bother reading this far before you hit the comments – I’d make fun of any cable news show that featured such a ridiculous complaint. However, I’d still pick F&F first, though, because Steve Doocy is so damn punchable.

UPDATE: People are pissed that the uniforms are made in China. I know this because they typed their rage on computers made in Japan.

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Since being named the cover model for the 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, With Leather’s favorite superdupermodel Kate Upton has finally become a household name. No longer reserved to the dreams of bloggers and their pervert uncles, the 19-year old Florida native (call me!) spent her Monday and Tuesday on a whirlwind TV tour, starting with the official reveal (sort of) of her new cover on the Late Show with David Letterman, and including a stop by the Today Show and one especially hilarious visit to CNBC’s Power Lunch, on which she awesomely humiliated Darren Rovell. And here I thought we couldn’t love her more.

But there were also plenty of TV and media personalities who either didn’t think to send in an interview request for Upton or just felt like it was much easier to tear her down now that she’s been built up without her actually being there to defend herself. Enter: Bill O’Reilly, who discussed Upton’s rise to fame last night on The O’Reilly Factor with a marketing expert and another angry woman. And if you’re wondering if O’Reilly came across as clueless while using out-of-context TV clips and information to support his claims, watch for yourself.

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Links

With Leather On NFL.Com - Sure, there are links all OVER the page, but we’re right there in the middle. Never thought I’d get quoted for talking about John Cena in a Tim Tebow paragraph on NFL.com, but here we are. The coolest. [NFL.com]

The 10 Must-See Christmas Specials This Month - Is nowhere playing ‘A Garfield Christmas’ this month? Because I don’t want to live in a world where I “must see” ‘Prep and Landing 2: Naughty vs. Nice’. [Warming Glow]

The South Park RPG Sounds Hella Cool - I thought Lufia & The Fortress Of Doom was already a South Park RPG. Oh well, I’ll buy the hell out of this, because you can’t play that crappy Twisted Metal South Park game for your entire life. [Gamma Squad]

5 Depressing Facts About Birdman And Mack Maine’s Billionaire Minds Mixtape - Depressing fact #6: this is neither basketball Birdman nor Hanna-Barbera Birdman. [Smoking Section]

Fox News: The Muppets Is A Liberal Plot! - Man, I’m glad The Goonies wasn’t released when Fox News was around. “Those kids should just accept that their parents are leaving the Goondocks and obey them! Nyeah!” [Film Drunk]

50 Cats Straight Chillin’ With Piles Of Cash - I don’t know, but it involves cats. [UPROXX]

The Best Of Fat #Jonah Hill - This should just be the Walk Hard scene where he talks about how hard it is to masturbate with a ghost hand in its entirety and the Orson Welles reference from Superbad and then nothing else. [UPROXX]

46 Cultural Moments That Defined 2011 - Buzzfeed hates December and doesn’t want it included in any of these lists. [Buzzfeed]

Famous Album Cover Locations As Seen In Google Street View - Pretty awesome. Anybody know where they took the pic for the cover of ‘Cracked Rear View’? [FARK]

Angelina Jolie Graces the Cover of Newsweek, Gives America Lethal Dose of the Heebie-Jeebies - The hell is going on with this? I’m gonna go look at my DVD of Hackers for a while. [Pajiba]

Pretty Damn Cool Animated Comic Book Covers - All they need is an antiquated Stan Lee voice-over about “shpidah man!” I want 10,000 more of these. [Unreality]