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The most unforgiving criticism in sport is directed at any athlete who fans believe is celebrated too excessively above his true talent level — especially those stars who are gloried because they're such pretty people.

To wit: As David Beckham retires, so much attention is being devoted not to how good he was but to how good he was not. I never saw that emphasized with a fine athlete before. Likewise, while celebrity athletes are hardly new, in Beckham's case, he is so outlandishly notorious that it's been just impossible for many people to allow for the fact that he, like any good product, could be judged independently for his value on the one hand and his marketing on the other.

Becks came as quite a contradictory package. A huge, rich star, he was, nevertheless, a disciplined, hard worker dedicated to his craft. His teams won four championships in four countries. He was not only a sports celebrity but a social crossover — the acclaimed metrosexual. His wife — Posh Spice, the most visible of what the British sports press wonderfully call WAGs, wives and girlfriends — is the exemplar of whatever is the opposite of "shy and retiring." But your Mr. and Mrs. Beckham nevertheless managed a fairly scandal-free tabloid life.

Moreover, in contrast to his sexy, rakish image, Beckham's game was, in fact, standard, lacking much in the way of stylish invention. Yes, we all know he could bend it, but it was his ability to, in soccer parlance, cross that made him so exceptional. That is, the most glamorous athlete in the world didn't fit the hot-shot attacking mold. Beckham was, at the end of the day, an associate, a sideways guy. And like that, he was sort of equal parts vanity and wonder.

Perhaps in time his reputation will be nudged to the margins, where he will primarily be recalled more for being what we commonly refer to as a "character" — talented, yes, but remembered rather more the way Yogi Berra and Charles Barkley are in America.

But really, that wouldn't do Becks justice. He is a spectacular figure, one of those phenomena that inexplicably pop up in some part of every culture every now and then when the time is just right and the ingredients are all perfectly brewed. Understand, he was not an original. No, David Beckham has simply been more of everything that he had to be to bend himself into planetary eminence.

Sometimes, some things just come to a boil.

Horace Greeley may have suggested at one point that going west might be a good idea, but he probably wouldn't be happy to see what's going on with Los Angeles as of late. The Dodgers are in last place in the National League West, the Angels are hovering near the bottom of the American League West, and the Lakers' appearance in the playoffs was brutally short. Even Jimmy Fallon and NBC are bringing The Tonight Show back to Manhattan, deserting some place called Burbank after 40 years.

Four years later, with Yorty's act wearing thin, Bradley led Yorty in the initial election and beat him in the runoff by 100,000 votes, including a majority of white voters, becoming the city's first African-American mayor.

Bradley is the longest-serving mayor in L.A. history, winning a total of five terms (including a rout of Yorty in 1981). In 1989, Bradley got a majority in the first round and didn't need to go into a runoff, and that hadn't happened with any L.A. mayor in decades. Like Yorty, Bradley sought the governorship twice, but Yorty never managed to win his party's nomination. Bradley was the Democratic nominee in both 1982 and 1986, losing each time to George Deukmejian (R); in '82 he was within an eyelash of becoming governor.

But his fifth term, which was marred by charges of police brutality and a worsening of race relations, all but collapsed in the riots that followed the 1992 trial in which L.A. police officers were acquitted of the beating of Rodney King, riots that led to deaths and massive property damage ... and a great loss to Bradley's leadership and legacy. He retired a broken man in 1993.

Then came Richard Riordan, a Republican who stressed his business experience and his promise to crack down on crime, a clear reference to what had happened to the city in the latter years of Bradley's tenure. Riordan became the first GOP mayor since Norris Poulson was ousted by Yorty in '61, and was re-elected in a 1997 landslide.

2001 brought James Hahn to city hall. Hahn was a long time government insider, serving as city controller as well as city attorney. Perhaps equally important was that he was the son of the legendary Kenneth Hahn, a longtime county supervisor who was well known as a civil rights champion and beloved in the black community. Jimmy Hahn was elected by some 40,000 votes, defeating Villaraigosa, who had been the speaker of the state Assembly. But Hahn made the controversial decision to replace Police Chief Bernard Parks, an African-American, and that cost him dearly with black voters. Villaraigosa, with the kind of charisma Hahn never had, walloped him in the 2005 rematch. He became the city's first Latino mayor since Cristobal Aguilar, who served from 1871-72.

Beijing has long been about the closest thing to an ally that Pyongyang enjoys, but the seizure of a Chinese fishing boat by unidentified North Koreans has threatened to put an already tenuous relationship on even shakier ground.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei was quoted by The New York Times as making it fairly clear that his government was not happy about the development.

China, he said, is "demanding that it properly deal with the matter as quickly as possible and effectively safeguard the legitimate rights of the Chinese fishermen, as well as the safety of their lives and property."

The incident comes close on the heels of North Korea conducting a series of test firings of "short-range projectiles," including short-range missiles and possibly rocket artillery over the weekend.

According to The Times:

"The announcement about the captured boat promptly drew an outcry from Chinese media and citizens online, some of whom have already expressed increasing impatience with North Korea over its nuclear weapons ambitions and threats to the region. ...

"The Chinese media reports said that the boat was seized May 5, with 16 men aboard, and that the North Korean authorities demanded payment of 600,000 renminbi, or about $98,000, to release them and the vessel, apparently on the grounds that it was fishing in waters claimed by North Korea. The deadline for payment was Sunday, the Beijing Times newspaper said.

"The owner of the boat [Yu Xuejun] drew public attention to its capture through messages on Tencent Weibo, a Chinese microblog service. And on Monday he issued a message saying that he feared his crew had been beaten."

Iranians choose a new president next month, and one thing Iran's leaders are intent on avoiding is a repeat of the massive street protests that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial re-election in 2009.

The sponsors of those protests, known as the Green Movement, have been effectively silenced inside Iran, but not online. The heroine of a graphic novel about the violent suppression of dissent in 2009 is now launching a virtual campaign of her own.

Her name is Zahra, a wife and mother in Tehran who starred in the 2010 online graphic novel Zahra's Paradise. Zahra's Paradise happens to be the name of a vast cemetery in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where Iranians from ayatollahs to war veterans to student dissidents are buried.

Readers were riveted by Zahra's struggle to find her son Mehdi, who had disappeared during a street protest. As with many real-life Tehran mothers, Zahra's search ended at a graveside in Zahra's Paradise.

The Web comic became a global phenomenon and was translated into 15 languages. Now, Zahra's creators and the human rights group United for Iran have launched a new storyline in which she runs for president.

In the panel below, Zahra's best friend, Miriam, a caustic critic of the government who calls Iran's clerical leaders "clowns" presiding over a circus, urges Zahra to enter the campaign, despite Zahra's sighs that it won't bring her dead son back: