So, it seems pretty strange to want to be the owner of a NBA team– in a league in which roughly 80% of the players are black– if you don’t like black people. Why does L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling want to spend his days around blacks if he doesn’t even want his girlfriend to associate with them? And then there’s the fact his girlfriend is half black and half Mexican. So, he’s not so choosy in the privacy of the bedroom.
Sterling’s leaked anti-black rant has certainly caused a bit of a headache for the league office. If Sterling has any class, he’ll acknowledge that he’s unfit to be a NBA owner and put his team on the market. It’s a real shame. The Clippers are finally kind of good after decades of futility, and then this happens. To think it involves Magic Johnson, too! Sterling couldn’t have picked a worse man to insult in all of Los Angeles.
I feel awful for the players. Like you said, all these years and now they’ve got an admirable team. And right at the beginning of the playoffs, too. How demoralizing. And depressing.
I know! Sterling can just complain that he was “taken out of context!”
T.W. Shannon (the wannabe successor to J C Watts, Dr. Ben Carson, Condi Rice, and Cliven Bundy’s bodyguard to name just a few that don’t mind if the money is good enough. Identifying with the aggressor and suppressor isn’t rare.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid this is going to be one more case of “hey, what’s the big deal, what did I say that was so wrong?”.
I have started to feel really discouraged about all the blatant in-your-face racism lately. It feels like it’s everywhere.
(Which would surely come as no surprise to me if I wasn’t white.)
I am hoping Chris Rock is right and this is just the last gasp of these ugly people as they feel their world slipping away.
This isn’t going away.
Scroll the front page of TMZ Sports.
http://www.tmz.com/category/tmzsports/
Yeah, and then look at the comments on TMZ’s site. Many of them are even more depressing than Sterling’s rant.
I’m impressed that it’s in the media for discussion – seems to me many of the current public discussions are unimaginable 10 years back. Would Fox have distanced itself from Cliven Bundy’s comments 10 years ago?
Judging from the entirety of his rant, it sounds like his real concern was not advertising that his “girlfriend” has to look elsewhere for good sex.
One less thing for him to worry about now.
Oddly enough he’s comfortable appearing in public with her – a half black, half Mexican woman. He’s upset that she’s seen associating with blacks.
wwwanderer, your statement may be sarcasm, but in case it isn’t, what Quaker said.
That’s the thing Sterling can’t bring himself to say in his argument with his girlfriend. His friends are calling him (or, more likely, it’s the voices in his head calling him), saying the only reason a woman would publish a picture of themselves with a black man is because they are having sex with him and want to have sex with all black men who see the photo. His back-and-forth between “I’m not racist- I love black people” and “I live in a culture where you associate with them privately” is completely nonsensical until you place his sexual terror and explicitly racist reductions of black men into his mind. There, his nonsense makes sense.
I did admire her totally nailing Sterling to the fucking wall near the end with that “Would it be OK if I published a photo of me with Larry Bird?” response. At that moment, you could sense his understanding that the longer they argued, the more she would continue to reveal his racism. Which is why he moved to shut the discussion down.
But his objection, in my hearing of it, is that he wants ppl to think she is Latina only, not Mexican and Black; he seems afraid ppl will figure out she’s part Black; I don’t hear it as being about sex at all or sexual insecurity, but about not wanting ppl to know his g.f.’s heritage.
Errol, if Sterling’s concerns are not about sex at all, then why does he jump to talking about sex between his girlfriend and black men twice?
…
Stiviano: Is it a benefit to me? Does it matter if they’re white or blue or yellow?
Sterling: I guess you don’t know that. Maybe you’re stupid. Maybe you don’t know what people think of you. It does matter, yeah! It matters!
…
Sterling: How about your whole life, everyday, you could do whatever you want. You can sleep with them, you can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask them is not to promote it on (Instagram)…”
…
Stiviano: (Magic Johnson’s) made a lot of changes for his community, for the world, for the people, for the minorities- he’s helped a lot of people.
Sterling: Why are you forcing this down my throat?…I’m just saying that it’s too bad you can’t admire him privately, and during your entire fucking life, your whole life, admire him, bring him here, feed him, fuck him, I don’t care. You can do anything. But don’t put him on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me.
It strains credulity to claim that Sterling’s inappropriate discussion of sex is merely rhetorical.
yes, I don’t think it’s accidental, but he’s saying he’s ok with her being with them as long as it’s not in public – all of his side of the conversation struck me as weird, couldn’t tell what he was getting at, until reading lamh31’s quote about the locker room, where it seems he’s interested in men’s bodies in a sexual way – that’s they way I read that. Kind of like who was that preacher who hired a rent boy to carry his suitcases. I think his language in the part of the conversation you quoted supports my interpretation. In fact not wanting her to be at the games with them relates to his repressed feelings. ok, Dr Frist signing off now.
Boo:
Don’t forget that Sterling is an out and out racist. He’s said, and done, bigoted stuff for years. This isn’t a first time offense for him. All the more reason for the NBA to make Sterling sell the club(to Magic, why not).
Not sure it seems all that strange! Plantation owners pulled off essentially the same ‘feat’ (right down to the mixed-race ‘girlfriend’!) for decades without seeming bothered by the paradox/hypocrisy. I expect Sterling’s attitude towards ‘his’ players is pretty analogous.
Curse you! (shakes tiny fist) I came in here to say exactly that!
Me, too!
Lol; me three.
“Great minds [ . . . etc.]
” Small Business” major sports team owners are, of course, the plantation owners of our generation- and they get state, regional and federal tax subsidies to maintain their millionaire take home pay.
Exactly.
Good point on subsidies — true. Yet assholes like Sterling manage to think of themselves as Masters of the Universe who merit all the wealth/privilege they have by their own effort. Disgusting, really.
Hahaha! How much more right could I possibly have been?
I can remember Tom Tolbert, who played for him a couple decades ago, used to complain about him back then.
Thanks for mentioning an Arizona Wildcat. Bear Down!
Would you accept a plan to transfer ownership of team to his children, with Sterling suspended? (His son-in-law is already the team’s director of basketball administration and considered to be Sterling’s probable successor for control of the team.)
No.
Why not?
What about selling to his children on favorable terms?
I say sell to anyone that doesn’t have that name.
You can say that, but can you give good reasons as to why?
Maybe no good reasons, but this has been going on for a while. They didn’t do anything about it back then. So, I’d rather someone else have the team. ‘Beautiful Black bodies’ really?
He might as well sell the team. Somehow I don’t think he’s going to be able to have a good time at “his” games anymore.
Wow, old white racists are really making noise of late. As Mr. T. would have said, I pity the fool. Millions have people have heard him whining like a little girl, “OH! OH! That hurts my feelings! Sleep with whoever you want. Just don’t show up my tiny little pee pee in public.” Imagine how embarrassing it is to be him about now.
Beyond that, I can’t hate someone who was raised in the swamp of racism for being racists. His mom was a well known bigot. The culture back when he was a kid was totally bigoted. As the song in South Pacific says, “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late . . .”
Thank God kids today aren’t raised in a culture of bigotry. Racism will not be unheard of 50 years from now but it will be far less common. My son, who is 22, is typical of his generation. When he was six, he asked me, “What’s a black person?” I said, “Michael, you’re best friend, Simon — have you noticed his skin is darker than yours?” He thought about it for a second and replied, “But he’s not black, he’s brown.” I said, “Yes, and you’re not white; you’re beige.” Ten years later, when he wanted to grow dreads, he complained about not being black.
That’s how it is for most young people today. People come in all shades and it doesn’t mean anything.
The next owner, whoever they would be, should move the team out of the Staples Center, change the team’s name, and change the team’s colors.
Leave the failed Clippers name to fall into the dustbin of history.
I’m getting so, so tired of right-wing rhetoric and all the hoops it forces us all to jump through.
In this case, and with Cliven Bundy), it’s the perennial problem of right-wingers who detest and fear minorities and yet “know” (either in terms of public perception or on a deeper level) that racism is bad.
So they’re forced to engage in this tortuous inverted logic where being racist isn’t racist and calling out racism is the “real” racism…and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of us have to follow along. (In this case I’m referring to the spots on the recording where he insists he doesn’t hate anyone, or refuses to grapple with the contradictions that the girlfriend tirelessly draws him back towards confronting.)
It’s just so profoundly tiring and debilitating.
Apparently his wife isn’t too happy with V. Stiviano either:
the recording certainly sounds like she’s setting him up. and who is knocking on the door?
so the wife is using the mistress for the gifts given to her by the husband?
What’s the story here and why does this make any difference to what he said?
Surprise, surprise, the wife hates the mistress…film at 11.
May or may not have any relevance, but it’s unusual if not unique. Has any wife ever filed a lawsuit against her husband’s current mistress for return of property the mistress received as gifts from the husband?
Legally, it’s an interesting question.
That’s true. I was just wondering to my sister if that’s now a thing where wives are suing mistresses for monetary compensation for gifts given by cheating husbands.
I mean is there some new law I’m missing that says mistresses can be sued if they accept gifts from married lovers?
Tort – case law – and doubt there’s any precedent. If the wife wins, that could put a serious damper on the mistress business.
I’m a divorce attorney and have never heard of any case like that in 18 years of practice. Law varies from state to state but I’d be surprised if the wife could win anywhere. In the eyes of the law, the mistress wasn’t doing anything wrong. The wife might be able to sue the husband for wasting community assets (in the community property states where I’ve practiced). I suppose one could attempt to join the mistress as an indispensable party but I don’t think it would work because she’s not in any way indispensable. She’s really only a witness. Perhaps the court allows her to be deposed and subpoenaed to testify at the divorce trial.
This is probably one of those situations where someone with a lot of money is using their resources to exact revenge just by filing the case and forcing the defendant to defend. In the long run, one could get sanctioned for filing a frivolous case and maybe have to pay the defendant’s attorneys fees. But if you’ve got nothing but money, maybe you file the case anyway and try to leverage some sort of settlement.
Plus he’s had mistresses in the past, so why this one?
Perhaps he went over his weekly spending allowance for mistresses. Blame the mistress/girlfriend/boyfriend/ instead of the cheating SO makes human look dumb.
I can find references to wives winning lawsuits involving their dead husbands’ mistresses. The most famous was the estranged widow of WC Fields winning half of his estate, taking away some of the money that Fields had bequeathed to his mistress.
A more recent case was that of political activist Kathie O’Keefe, who a court ruled had to account for all the gifts and money her lover had given her and pay it back in cash. That was Washington state, but perhaps California has a similar law banning one spouse from giving away community property without the consent of the other spouse.
That’s interesting. Had O’Keefe not made a claim against the estate, the widow is unlikely to have sued her. The legal reasoning doesn’t differ from Mrs. Sterling’s suit — and CA is a community property state.
Oh and in case yall thought thus dude and his racist bs was news to NBA…2011
“Donald Sterling allegedly acted terribly in the Clippers locker room”
wow! sounds like there may be some other issues there as well.
`Look at those beautiful black bodies.’
Sure does sound like a racehorse owner boasting to his friends about his fabulous stable of winners, doesn’t it? Or a plantation owner boasting of his human livestock.
@psddluva4evah 1m
@Gus_802 @Green_Footballs Sterling reminds me of this Chappelle bit about racism so blatant u just can’t get mad.
http://t.co/kqlrufs6HU