Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Take on the Donald Sterling Clippers sale

Donald Sterling is a reprehensible piece of garbage. He's an outed
racist and a man who has no regards for human dignity but still I
wonder if forcing anybody to sell their company is right. I get why
the NBA wants him out, I get the financial costs of keeping him in and
I get the message it sends but after chewing on it for a week, I don't
know if it is right.
First of all I am sure he is far from the only racist in American
Sports, let alone the NBA. He's a wacky old coot and he's compared
running an NBA franchise to a plantation but I'm sure there are a
bunch of other guys who see it similarly. But more importantly, in a
country which defends be right to free speech with it's very first and
most important amendment, how can we force somebody to drop out of an
entire industry because of words he spoke in private to somebody else.

I can see the suspension because he embarrassed be league but I can't
quite justify forcing somebody to sell their business because you
don't like their views. The other 29 owners will vote on it and I'd
be shocked if it wasn't unanimous because any owner that voted against
it would become Suzyn Waldman to Sterling's Sterling. Even if they
said if would be a private vote, the fear of it being leaked would be
so great that it would still be unanimous. But if they could vote
completely in secret, I bet it would be far from unanimous.

The truth of if is, there are no grounds in US law which make this an
event that warrants that degree even if the words are awful.

Is what he said despicable?...yes
Is it criminal? definitely not.

The again the old geezer will sell his team for a billion dollars
after have paid about $15 million for it, not a bad rate of return.

1 comment:

Mr. R. Lee said...

I had dinner with a friend of mine a little while back, and he pointed out the possibility of V. Stiviano being a post-op tranny.

So then I checked out photos of V. Stiviano's face more closely online, and yup, I definitely see some Thai ladyboy likeness in that face.

So I think it is a he-she.