I’m a little perplexed at the complexities of contract law that allow one man to declare that another man is for life banned from association with an entity that he lawfully owns. But then I’m just a simple military dude…
Anyway, what’s even more vexing for me is the existential consideration that Donald Sterling is, at his most fundamental level 100% exactly the same person today as he was five days ago when the NAACP was poised for the second time in five years to celebrate his humanity and dedication to the race-baiting and shit-stirring organization.
The first lesson, I guess, is the one I’m learning more about all the time, and that’s that we shouldn’t have heroes. All men’s feet are made of clay. Some dudes are really good, some pretty nasty. Some share our beliefs in some contexts and to some extent, but we should always appreciate before we put anybody on a pedestal that everybody’s shit stinks. And the same goes for organizations. It may not come as much surprise to find that Paula Dean or Cliven Bundy or that duck guy might espouse racist feelings (and to be fair, some were on to Sterling in 2006), but when a group like the NAACP can make such an incredibly lazy mistake (btw, that first award he got from them was in 2009), kinda makes you think organizations like that have different motives, huh?
The second lesson is that you really should never believe people when they piss and moan about privacy. You don’t have to agree with or even do anything less than outright condemn Sterling’s comments as Neanderthal to appreciate that, were it not for a likely unlawful (in California where it occurred, where both parties are legally required to be knowledgeable of it) recording of an otherwise private conversation, we’d have a) never heard of this guy, and/or b) never known of his thoughts. And yet, so many privacy advocates are cheering his head on a stake.
But this isn’t about what Kareem himself acknowledged is a creepy lack of deference to privacy, per se. It’s that today we must live in a world of Schrodinger’s Racist. Here, someone’s beliefs on race are both racist and tolerant until his box is opened. A dude is not just obscurely unknown to the masses, but can actually be lauded and held up as a paragon of tolerance because of his outward and public actions. He’s believed to be pure and clean and totally un-racist.
Something tells me Sterling has felt this way for a long time—at least at some point since 1981 when he purchased the Clippers. Donald Sterling wasn’t punished today by the NBA because of what he is or what he believes (as chilling as that may sound…) No, he was punished because we found out about it. Someone opened his box and he must pay.
Bottom line is that anybody in public life either is or isn’t a racist. Or a homophobe. Or whatever… Without knowing the insides of his mind, he is neither racist nor non-racist, really. Only when we open his box to we learn. Curious, isn’t it, that he could have taken his actual feelings… the actual content of his character, if you will…to his grave, were it not for that recording. And we’d have been none the wiser.
Worse, thanks to the NAACP, we’d have believed him to be downright humanitarian by the very organization that feels (for some reason) it has the final say in such manners!
Just food for thought.
-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from Houston, of all places…)
P.S. A corollary: Intellectual quiz: Can you think of any other instance where people have hidden who they are, what they actually believe, their true characters, out of fear of what ‘decent society’ would think? Can you imagine what the turmoil would be like of living with such a secret and knowing that at any moment you could be exposed and what that might mean to your life, your loved ones, your very livelihood? Ever think what it might be like for those people when they’re exposed and suddenly those who used to be friendly with them publically deny and spurn them? I dunno… just a stream of consciousness.
Do you think at some point people are going to get ‘outrage fatigue’ and stop dancing like puppets when the left demands they be outraged by something ridiculous?
V (no relation to that lady who recorded that conversation), not as long as they continue to collect scalps. The spectacle of this hunger game in the public eye will unlikely get boring any faster than the Kardashians and House Hunters.
It’s a private organization with its own bylaws & rules that Sterling inherited-to-obey when he bought the team. Love your points. Especially in the post scriptum.
Nice job.
Unfortunately, you have a major item ass backwards.
Is someone’s character based on what they say in private, or think to themselves, or is their character determined by their actions, primarily their public behavior?
I’ll re-post what I put up in an earlier thread that referenced this Sterling issue:
I brought up another issue there: is it the proper function of ‘journalists’ (media) to make these secretly taped (likely unlawfully, as you correctly pointed out) comments and disseminate them? Would it be any more ethical if the recording were lawful?
I say NO.
We shouldn’t know about this…AT ALL.
I wonder if the staff of the NY Times would like to have their most private moments recorded and then laid bare for the public. Do you think they’d be in favor of that?
Would you be in favor of it happening to YOU?
Sterling ought to, through his lawyers, tell NBA Commissioner Silver to go pound sand up his ass, and to see if he can force him to sell the team.
Anyone who supports this travesty is every bit as big a cancer as the witch hunters themselves.
This man got caught saying discriminatory words. The most “outraged” live in gated communities and send their children to exclusive schools. But I’m sure there’s no irony in that, so never mind.
He should sue the person who made the recording without his consent for $2.5 million. Because that is how much their actions directly cost him.
I’ll be impressed if the NBA acts similarly for some homophobic outburst…but I’m not holding my breath. As to the “slippery slope”, what’s next?
– Voting Republican?
– Giving money to the GOP?
– Supporting the 2nd Amendment?
While he’s a boor, I hope he say the team’s for sale—for TWO BILLION-dollars.
Whatever happened to, “Sticks and stones…”? It’s actions, not words that have real meaning.
Sterling’s less-than-sterling character has been well-known for many, many years. The only reason he’s been able to continue is his money and how he spends it, notably his donations to race organizations and similar others. And so contemplating what it might be like to be worried about being found out doesn’t apply here. Sterling was the NBA’s worst-kept secret.
Complete tripe and surprising coming from a self-described ‘military dude’. Heroes — people we admire and look up to, those who inspire us, who have demonstrated great courage or any other number of positive attributes — are one of life’s greatest gifts. Human imperfection exists, yes, but considering a person a hero is not leaping to the conclusion of infallibility nor is any behavior consistent with heroic standards a blank check on any subsequent behavior. The good should never be the victim of the pure.
Privacy is an important issue. I’m not sure what constitutes ‘pissing and moaning’ but every law-abiding citizen who seeks some measure of privacy in his life deserves to be left reasonably alone. Yes, there are no doubt those hypocrites who were outraged that Bill Clinton’s privacy was made a public laugh-line (when, as a public servant in the world’s most public office he deserved nothing of the kind), are outraged that John Kerry’s comments about Israeli ‘apartheid’ were made public (“How dare that reporter find his way into the Trilateral Commission’s secret meeting, then publicize what he said!”), but cheer when Newt Gingrich’s private telephone conversation was recorded and publicized (illegal) and are only too happy to expose a frothing racist (Sterling), laws be damned. However, by deciding to view as suspect any claim to privacy means that privacy itself likely suffers. I couldn’t disagree more.
FTR, there has been some speculation as to Sterling’s politics. From what I’ve read, he’s not politically active in any real sense. I believe it was initially reported that he’s a Democrat but I’ve recently heard that he’s actually a registered Republican.
In my life experience (growing up gay in a blue state), liberal’s liberalism is a veneer. The interior of the box is much different than the exterior.
However, I have found most conservatives tell you exactly where they stand. This is why i prefer the company of conservatives.
As for heroes…. True heroes are hard to come by. Our society has used the label of “hero” so frequently it has lost its meaning. I find my heroes close to me, not the ones the media labels as a hero : my mother who came from a less than ideal family setting to raise 5 children in a loving environment, a firefighter who does extraordinary things with very little fanfare, a social worker who has truly dedicated her life to helping at risk children, etc.
Perhaps your problem with heroes is that you are letting other people pick them for you…
We can thank Oprah for the lack of personal privacy in this nation. When people share too much information, I call that “Oprah-izing”.
Colorado Patriot,
Well said from beginning to end.
One thing I have noticed in all of this is how easy it has become to earn the title of r-a-a-a-a-a-a-c-i-s-t.
I am a bit old-fashioned here. I allow some prejudice and even a little garden variety bigotry before I start worrying about racism.
When Leon tells me about this n*gger showing up at the pick-up basketball game and how he proceeds to hog the ball and won’t let any of local n*ggers have their turn, I am not inclined toward thinking racism.
When Leon is all angry at the Indian or Korean dude at the convenience store in the hood because he is grittin’ on the brothers and always looking at them like they are five-finger discounters, I don’t leap to the assumption of racism.
Neither does Leon. He knows that if he ran the store, he would darn sure watch for out for being chumped.
So, if, say, my church is mostly vanilla or mostly licorice, is that prejudice, bigotry or racism?
Like homophobia, I want to see the rules. It seems to me that someday a black homosexual dwarf who is an illegal alien will be proclaimed emperor for life just because he holds so many anti-diversity guilt cards.
Sterling changed his name from Tokowitz. He started out as a divorce and slip and fall lawyer and ventured into the landlord business. He essentially slum-lorded in Koreatown in L.A. where he refused to rent to non-Koreans. In 2003, he attempted to evict a prostitute from a house he had given her
and lost in court.
Does this man “appeal” to you as a knight in shining armor? Are you shocked, shocked, shocked that the core of Tokowitz/Sterling’s character is cheesy, low-rent, sleazy, execrable schlock?
How is he a racist? The pimps in the NAACP looked the other way for a few scoops of his cash. Did the black Clipper players whore their racial integrity for his sacks of gold? Has there been a massive NBA league indifference to this man for all of these years? If all the other owners are top-grade humanitarians, why didn’t they sniff this turd out immediately?
Sorry, but once again the race Puritans are strutting their despair extravaganza. The hyperbole expressed in their outrage knows no bounds.
A gold-digger has knocked her mark over. Now America is up in arms because there is no moral in this gutter. Really, folks, it says a lot more about who we have become than what Sterling is or isn’t. What exactly do you expect to find when you pop the lid on a septic tank? Creme Brûlée?
I agree that we need to stop our hero-worship nonsense. We can’t whitewash people anymore, it just creates unrealistic perceptions and expectations. We can still commemorate the accomplishments of great men and women, but unless they were bona fide saints, (no, not just in the Catholic sense) we should also recall their flaws.
But if there are no heroes, are there villains? And if there are villains and no heroes, what does that say about humans?