What a world we live in, where evidence of years and years of despicable, discriminatory, sexist, racist behaviour gets a man no more than a few fines and a couple of court scuffles, but a lame phone call secretly taped by a mistress and leaked to TMZ will get you a oneway ticket to disgraceland.
This story is about Donald Sterling, the soon-to-be-former owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers. Last weekend TMZ threw a grenade into Sterling's white-bread world, releasing a recording of a phone conversation between the 80-year-old coot and his 31-year-old girlfriend in which Sterling made some ridiculous statements, some truly awful statements, and some downright hilarious statements.
First, the awfully hilarious. Sterling was angry that his girlfriend - who, remember, is five decades younger than him! - was showing up to basketball games with black athletes and celebrities like Magic Johnson and posting pictures from those encounters on the Internet.
Sterling said it was OK for her to do other things with them - including have sex with them! - but please stay off the Instagram. What a cool boyfriend.
Did I mention this young lady is part Hispanic and part. .. black?! The TMZ grenade became an NBA nuclear bomb when new league commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life and vowed to do "everything in his power" to force the sale of the team to another owner.
There were worse ramblings in the recording, like Sterling's insane response after his girlfriend asked him if he knew that he employs a team full of black athletes: "I support
them and give them food, and clothes, and cars, and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Do I know that I have - Who makes the game? Do I make the game, or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?" What a smoothy.
For many people, this tape wasn't a surprise at all. It was, in fact, rather tame compared to other deeds - Sterling has a long, well-documented history of vile behaviour. NBA legend Elgin Baylor, after he was fired as general manager by the Clippers, filed an unsuccessful wrongful termination lawsuit against Sterling, alleging that his former boss had a "plantation mentality" and had instructed Baylor that he wanted the team to "have a white Southern coach coaching poor black players."
Sterling's history includes paying $2.75 million to settle the largest housing discrimination lawsuit in history. Sterling, owner of several housing developments in California, reportedly worked to keep blacks, Hispanics and people with children out of his properties. In a sworn statement, one of his employees repeats comments that Sterling allegedly made about one of the buildings he had recently acquired: "All the blacks in this building, they smell, they're not clean. .. all of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day."
Now we're getting into some vile stuff. And when a man who owns a lot of real estate is actively working against vulnerable sectors of the population, now we're talking about stuff that hurts real people in real ways that goes way beyond who poses with whom on Instagram.
Yet all of that pre-TMZ stuff was basically ignored as Sterling went about his high-profile business of running the worst franchise in professional sports. That Sterling only became a pariah after TMZ dubiously obtained a tawdry recording of a seemingly crazy old man talking to his seemingly gold-digging girlfriend has started what Kareem Abdul Jabbar cleverly coined, in an op-ed for Time, the "finger wagging Olympics."
Is this what we've come to now? Is real discrimination OK as long as it doesn't land you on a star-shaming tabloid show? Others, like Kareem, have made the "why is this rage happening now because of something stupid instead of years ago because of something serious" argument more eloquently than I can, most notably ESPN's Bomani Jones, who spit an incredible 10 straight minutes of freestyle rage on Dan Le Batard's radio show after TMZ turned on the bigot spigot.
Yet here we are, thanks to the woman who killed the golden goose with a tape recorder. And oh boy, the rage at Sterling and glee at his downfall is in full effect. And there's nothing more spectacular than the rage found in the silly little world of professional sports.
Sometimes, though, the silly sports world can provide lessons that transfer over to the real world. Sports are stupid and funny and many people care way too much about them. For every one reporter working to hold people with power accountable, there are 1,000 reporters trying to be the first one to post on Twitter the name of John Tortorella's replacement.
But not every scam artist is going to slip up and end up on TMZ. No clever crook in a suit and tie is easy to catch (unless, of course, that clever guy just really loves crack).
Here in Canada, news recently came out that some unscrupulous lawyers and their agents have been scamming First Nations people as they navigate through the system set up to provide compensation for suffering caused by the horrid residential school system. That's right - these crooks are preying on victims of abuse who are seeking restitution for the abuse they suffered.
Now that's awful. Yet that story barely registers because there's no one showing up on tabloid TV videos texting naked selfies or doing blow with a hooker.
If this story teaches anything, it is these two things: 1) if there is discrimination going on but it isn't salacious enough for Ben Mulroney to solemnly address on etalk, that doesn't mean it should be ignored, and 2) despicable old men - maybe you should keep it in your pants.
