Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
An Old White Guy is married but has a much-younger mistress. He’s rich enough to give her a condo and Bentley and fool enough to think he can order her around. He told her he doesn’t mind her cheating on him: she can sleep with her other lovers, just don’t embarrass him by posting pictures of those other lovers online or bringing them to LA Clippers basketball games because his Old-White-Guy buddies tease him about it. His wife found out and is suing the gold-digging mistress to get the stuff back. So the mistress secretly taped the old guy and released the tape to the gossip sites to gain advantage in the litigation. So far, sounds pretty normal for Hollywood, right?
Oh, did I mention the mistress is Black? And the Old White Guy owns the basketball team?
The media is ablaze with news that racism has been found in America. The league is investigating. Al Sharpton will lead a rally. The players wore black armbands while they lost the game. Even President Obama – halfway around the world – felt the need to comment. Everyone is outraged that America is such a horribly racist place.
Except . . . it’s pretty weak beer. The guy is 80 years old, a relic from two generations ago. He was having a private conversation with his mistress, asking her not to cuckold him in public, which seems a reasonable request from a Sugar Daddy to a Gold-digger. He has owned the team for 20 years and has never been accused of racism before. In fact, the NAACP was all set to give him a Lifetime Achievement Award in two weeks, which means he must have been doing all the right things in race relations up until this point. He’s a private citizen, not a US Senator and Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan. Okay, yes, he has unfashionable opinions; but he’s not exactly representative of mainstream America today.
The whole thing reminds me of Oprah claiming to be discriminated against while she was shopping in Switzerland, just in time to promote her new movie. If these Extortion-by-Race incidents are the best examples of racism to be found today, then we can pretty well conclude that actual racism in America is dead and gone.
Joe Doakes
whatever Sterling’s views – and everything I’ve read so far strikes me as he’s the kind of casual, not especially ideological racist that a lot of people were in that generation, even if you leave out the whole “sugar daddy/Golddigger” thing – he’s basically this year’s Trayvon Martin; a bone to be chewed in yet another Democrat “base turnout” campaign.
While aspects of this whole thing do appear to be turning into something out of a Tom Wolfe novel, there is a major problem with this assertion regarding Sterling: “He has owned the team for 20 years and has never been accused of racism before.”
In actuality, the evidence that Sterling had some pretty retrograde views was right there all the time if anybody cared to look for it. He’d paid a huge settlement in a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in his rental properties, was reported to have told his former GM Elgin Baylor that he wanted his team composed of “poor black boys” and a white coach, and had allegedly used the mother of all racial slurs when interviewing a prospective head coaching candidate (http://www.complex.com/sports/2014/04/clippers-owner-sterling-racist/donald-sterling-asks-rollie-massimino-i-wanna-know). The contest to see who can be most offended has proceeded in a predictable fashion, but don’t let disappointment in that conceal the fact that Sterling is a fundamentally offensive person.
Sterling has been a pariah in the NBA for years. The Clippers were horrid and a Chicago Cubs-like joke for years – mostly due to his mismanagement of the team. The fact that his financial contributions alone had qualified him for his second achievement award from the NAA(L)CP says more about the current mission of that organization than many of its past good works. Regardless of whether or not his views were “of his generation” (my father, who would be better than 90 if he was still around didn’t hold those views), he will lose his team. The league can’t afford to carry a bigot when better than 80% of the product people come to see is produced by people of color. Sorry, Mark Cuban and Glen Taylor, you really just don’t rate for the fans.
My question for the SitD commentariat is – does the mistress lose her membership in the sorority of gold digging skanks? This is pretty close to “the bitch done set me up” territory which I would think goes against their code.
One would imagine that she had the best of both worlds – a billionaire octogenarian who likely couldn’t f..uh, perform, paying her bills and he was okay with her f..uh, attending to her needs, with whomever she wanted provided she didn’t flaunt it on “the” Instagram. I can only imagine her actions have poisoned the well in the billionaire octogenarians looking for gold digging skanks community.
He may actually have a history of bigotry–in his rental business, he was said to have discriminated against blacks, Mexicans, and even Koreans, and there was an unsuccessful lawsuit against him for how he treated one of his black coaches.
But that said, if he’d rather have his girlfriend sleeping with Magic Johnson than being photographed with him, I think he’s the PERFECT spokesman for the NBA and pro sports leagues in general.
gold-digger mistress should be looked at very carefully for ties to gambling interests because the timing of this tape release as coincidence strains credulity – I could be wrong, she could be that stupid.
Please pardon my language, but why is it even necessary to give a shit about the private racist comments of an octogenarian billionaire…who, as it turns out happens to employ several African-Americans to which he pays millions?
ck – I think there’s a general consensus that Sterling is old-fashioned in all the wrong ways.
We’re on the same page; I just thought it worth pointing out the factual error in the “has never been accused of racism before” statement, which might cause people to discount the rest of the argument being made.
Along the same lines as what the others are noting, if indeed the NAACP was going to honor this guy (for contributions perhaps?) despite a well-documented history of some iffy ethics and morals (he’s a divorce lawyer and slumlord after all, beyond the racism allegations), maybe that says a lot about the NAACP and our political processes in general. A lot of nasty things.
Or, put differently, Vanessa Stiviano is not the only gold-digger involved in this case.
bikebubba, I agree, there are NO victims in this incident!
Unless kel, of course, you take into account the vast majority of us that have been bombarded with the 24/7 coverage of this non-issue.
I they’re vying for an appearance on a Jerry Springer show.
I’m no conspiracy theorist. This case smacks of gold digger revenge, although it should be noted that the recordings were done most likely without Sterling’s knowledge and therefore violate California law, in case anybody is interested, and given the fact that nobody on either side of the political spectrum seems to be, perhaps it will be one of those “no calls” I hear about in sports. I was surprised that even Fox News conservative commentators took turns driving the racism bus back and forth over Sterling until even the crows weren’t interested in the road kill. Flat and completely desiccated.
But back to the conspiracy: wouldn’t it be interesting if Sterling is forced to sell his team and the lucky buyer just happens to be Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Magic, indeed.
I’m glad it was ck111 that fact-checked me on Sterling’s racism. Had it been Dog Gone, I’d never hear the end of it. I appreciate the correction although . . . if Sterling always has been a giant racist and everybody knew it, then what’s the big deal now?
And more importantly, how does Sterling trying to limit his humiliation by his mistress lead to: ” We’ve made enormous strides, but you’re going to continue to see this percolate up every so often. And I think that we just have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, teaching our children differently, but also remaining hopeful that part of why some statements like this stand out so much is because there had been — there has been this shift in how we view ourselves.”
I’m bewildered. What is the President saying I should teach my kids . . . that if my mistress wants to flaunt her other lovers and humiliate me in front of my friends, I can tell her NO . . . unless she’s doing a Black guy?
Sterling is scum. So is his Bimbo. This is what happens when money pursues sex and crosses that fine line known as “humanity.”
What we’re finding out here is that classlessness isn’t a function of how much money you have. I’m personally rooting for all involved, from Sterling, the gold digger, and the NAACP, to lose. I doubt it’ll happen, though. I’d take Sterling’s penalty for being forced to dump the Clippers any day: if the NBA makes Sterling sell he’ll only have made $1B out of his purchase and that’s a penalty I’d love to have applied to me.
Well the commissioner has laid down the law. Sterling is banned for life, fined $2.5M, and sounds like their going to press the sale. I’ve heard speculation that this may have been set-up by people looking to get hold of the team. Maybe Magic and his pals working in cahoots with “gold-fingers”.
Scott, if you’re right, it looks like everyone loses but the lawyers. No disrespect intended, of course. :^)
He holds unpopular opinions so he can’t own a team. He can’t be CEO of a software company, either, I suppose. Getting hard for us politically incorrect people to make a living. Just out of curiosity, what jobs are we allowed to hold and who decides?
Yea I think the lawyers are going to play a big part in how the sale goes. As I understand it there is a school of thought that Sterling won’t go quietly and that might drive the sell price up. They want him out for fear that the loss of sponsors he’s causing will affect all of the owners. I can about see him saying something like: You want me out, OK here’s my price (and I bet that number will be really big). It will be very interesting to see how it all ends.
Very few people, (with a few major exceptions- http://time.com/79590/donald-sterling-kareem-abdul-jabbar-racism/) are noting how this guy was caught (a secret audiotape of a presumed private conversation without his consent; apparently illegal in the jurisdiction) expressing what many already knew were his thoughts prior to the secret recording.
Interesting that some, including the loathsome Bill Maher, are questioning the broadcast of secret recordings of peoples private conversations. Now that sanctimony is the order of the day – I’d be curious if James O’Keefe types will be vindicated or continue to be vilified by the sanctimonious Left.
Where (oh where) is our Dog Gone with her criticisms of this O’Keefe style ambush of a doddering old racist fool?
Seflores, like Scott and I (and you I presume) agree, the only people who make out well here are the lawyers, and plenty will get involved.
Joe, I’m actually OK with this, and the Mozilla case, as long as the NBA and Mozilla aren’t getting support from the government and we’re free not to do business with the NBA or Mozilla.
Which, with stadium subsidies, regrettably we’re not.