Aggression Slide Rule as Applied to China, Tyson

Bad actors are the boomerangs that always come back.

That’s true whether their crimes are big scale, as in the repressive government of mainland China and its mislabeled People’s Liberation Army, or smallish, as in Mike Tyson adding another chapter to his tumultuous life by eviscerating heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield’s ears during Saturday’s title fight in Las Vegas.

Despite June’s TV retrospectives recalling its human rights sins at home, symbolized by the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square, once-reviled Communist China is edging up the respectability scale on the capitalist shoulders of Hong Kong, on which all eyes are fixed this week like lasers. If China honors its vows to behave civilly there, as many predict it will out of economic necessity, then its behavior on human rights closer to Beijing likely will come under a softer TV focus. If any TV focus at all.

As its recently renewed most-favored-nation trading status with the U.S. suggests, China’s value to the west as a trader transcends its inhumane misdeeds. Just as, in a much narrower way, Tyson’s value as a commodity transcends his behavior.

Even if Tyson’s own misdeed was not “one of the most disgusting acts of all of mankind,” as Van Earl Wright titled it on KCBS-TV Channel 2 Tuesday morning, it was plenty disgusting enough to capture the nation’s attention. And his resurrection--starting with Monday’s televised apology that was widely replayed Tuesday--already has begun.

“He did himself a world of good this afternoon,” KNBC-TV Channel 4’s Conan Nolan reported from Las Vegas on Monday. “He was eating crow like a man,” boxing guru Ferdie Pacheco, part of the Showtime pay-TV team for the Holyfield-Tyson rematch, said on TV Tuesday.

“Well, when you put two people in the ring . . ., “ Tyson’s somewhat apologist attorney began in an interview Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” program, repeating his line from the previous night’s “Larry King Live” on CNN.

Yet even if he never fights another opponent inside the ring, ex-con Tyson’s comeback on a commercial level is assured, if only because his notoriety will always have economic value to others. China may fulfill its one government/two systems pledge for Hong Kong, but America’s celebrity track runs on only one system.

So just as head-butting, rule-butting, Mormon-butting Dennis Rodman has been warmly smooched by Madison Avenue, professional wrestling and the entertainment industry because he has a famous name and face and hair like color bars, so, too, will Tyson ultimately receive similar treatment.

Just as John McEnroe--whose rants on the tennis court were at once berated and beloved by hypocritical sportscasters--has found respectability as a tennis commentator for NBC Sports and is now starring in IBM commercials that comically mock and exploit his reputation for rage, so, too, will Tyson get these kinds of gigs some day.

China’s commercial is Hong Kong.

This foreign affairs business gets terribly confusing. So for years, one Kong--King or Hong--seemed about like another.

But now this: another of television’s wide-eyed crash courses in the blurry planet beyond the United States, this one set in motion by Hong Kong coming under the control of mainland China on Monday after 156 years of flying Britain’s Union Jack.

For a couple of weeks now, with Monday circled on its calendar, TV has been granting Hong Kong most-favored-coverage status, and network anchors have been reporting from there like Siamese triplets. In that regard, “The CBS Evening News With Dan Rather,” in particular, has risen to the occasion. And locally, credit KCAL-TV Channel 9 with providing historical perspective Monday night in its ambitious, especially well-executed hourlong survey of Hong Kong and the checkered past of mainland China.

TV has been jaw to jaw with historic transitions of the ‘80s and ‘90s, from the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the surprise toppling of communism throughout East Europe and the Soviet Union to this latest spectacular in Southeast China--for which newscasters, for once, were not reactive. They and other media had plenty of time to prepare.

“History usually blindsides us,” ace foreign correspondent Bob Simon noted Monday on CBS, “but this is scheduled history. We’ve known about it for 13 years.” He was referring to the 1984 agreement under which China endorsed Hong Kong remaining capitalist for 50 years beyond Monday, when Britain’s long-term lease on the territory lapsed.

Flashing pomp that was grand enough to rival a Super Bowl halftime, Hong Kong reverted to China in an extravaganza to behold, with fireworks, bands, oompahs, bagpipes and VIPs galore. China sent President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng. The United States dispatched Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the British sent their best yacht, the Royal Britannia, their prime minister, Tony Blair, and their stiffest upper lip, Prince Charles.

And in came those generalists and generals, the media and Chinese troops, the latter as rigid and motionless as mannequins in their buses and transports, in striking contrast to their last starring appearance on TV eight years ago, when they ruthlessly crushed those demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

As former NBC correspondent Arthur Kent recalls that gore in his feisty new memoir, “Risk and Redemption”: “A victim’s blood-soaked chest lay before me and came into camera frame. I panned around him, panned to another man being given heart massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It seemed of little use--a head wound, glistening red, indicated a bullet direct to the brain.”

That grotesque scene seemed millenniums away from Monday’s civilized transfer of power that delivered economic giant Hong Kong from colonialism. The strategic serenity of the arriving Chinese forces was intended “to show the world that the People’s Liberation Army is here in peace,” reported Liz Mullen of CBS News. Oh really? “They don’t care what the world thinks; the world can get stuffed as far as they’re concerned [because] they’re righting a historic wrong,” CBS’ Simon reported earlier in the morning.

Both can’t be right, reflecting the mixed messages viewers have been receiving on TV about the new China-controlled Hong Kong. And at times, misinformation has run as deep as Hong Kong harbor.

Someone on CNN referred to the Tiananmen slaughter as China’s lingering “image problem,” as if the People’s Liberation Army were a street hood from Brooklyn whose aggression against the people was comparable, say, to Tyson attacking Holyfield’s ears.

Well, it would have been something had the Beijing government apologized for killing hundreds in Tiananmen Square the way a seemingly contrite Tyson asked forgiveness Monday for his crackup in the ring. And it would have been nice had there been some kind of omnipotent referee to disqualify the army and a commission to fine China 10% of its gross national product for brutality, just as the Nevada State Athletic Commission has the authority to deprive Tyson of up to $3 million of his $30-million purse for his misconduct.

“I was horrified by it,” President Clinton said on TV Monday about Tyson biting Holyfield twice in the ring. Of course, much greater horrors bloodied Tiananmen Square, whose memory now seems destined to slip further behind the bright neon of Hong Kong.