Donald Sterling, Racist Jew

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...e=jones/060810

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2542741

Donald Sterling (née Donald Tokowitz), skinflint Jewish owner of the LA Clippers, is being sued for housing discrimination for the second time in three years. The last time, he had to pay out a settlement that included $5,000,000 in plaintiffs' attorney fees alone.

Is anyone really surprised that the media isn't making a big issue of this?

1. It's the third time it's happened.
2. It's on ESPN.. that is about as big an issue as it's going to rate, don't you think?
3. Your making much of his jewishness? Pot, meet kettle.

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And still virtually no commentary from the media, I wonder why...

When Ozzie Guillen called Jay Mariotti a 'fag,' it was on every sports front page for about 10 days running. When a Jewish owner is deliberately discriminating against housing applicants on the basis of race, it barely even makes it into the papers at all. Therefore...

His 'Jewishness' is relevant here, as it may quite possibly explain why this news has been buried.

...therefore Ozzie Guillen is the manager (whose job it is to interact with the media on a regular basis) of a defending World Championship team, whereas Sterling is an owner (most of whom have no real relationship with the media) of a generally sub-par but recently half-decent basketball team.

Also, with Guillen, what he said was not in dispute in any way. Heck, he was practically defending it. With Sterling, we have an accusation and a lawsuit. True or not, therefore, any responsible individual will treat it as less sensational than a verified comment from a recently-crowned World Champion manager.

You said the same sort of thing about the Mel Gibson fiasco, and it ended up being a pretty big deal after all. Maybe you should give these things some time (and apply some perspective) before using them to tout yet another Jewish conspiracy.

I am not sure this has anything to do with his Jewishness as it does with two other factors:

1. You bring up Ozzie Guillen. Ozzie attacked a member of the media. The media does not enjoy being attacked. This was the main reason for this. Not to mention Marriotti is a bit of a celebrity. IF you attack someone known, th eoutrage will be greater than if you discriminate against some nameless, faceless people.

2. The sad truth is no one cares because the discriminatees are black. If they were white, there would be outrage. The media, and American public by extension, does not care about black people unless they are throwing/catching a ball. That's the sad truth.

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"What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present." - T.S. Eliot

When Marge Schott called Eric Davis her 'million dollar ******' and then suggested that Hitler's early years in office were a boon to Germany (a historically undeniable fact), not only did it cause a HUGE media firestorm, it led directly to Major League Baseball forcing her to sell the Cincinnati Reds. The media response to Sterling's repeated and much more serious offenses has, for the most part, been silence. The only real difference? Sterling is a Jew and Schott was outspoken in her criticism of Jews.

He has ALREADY BEEN FOUND LIABLE IN A SIMILAR CASE BEFORE! It's not an 'accusation,' it's yet another 'accusation' of behavior for which Sterling has already had to pay millions. It's part of an ongoing pattern of PROVEN discrimination.

Revisionist often, Yoda? You'll recall that my reference to Mel Gibson concerned the vastly disproportionate coverage the incident received. The least you could do is maintain a little bit of intellectual integrity and attack arguments that have actually been made...

Again, you're comparing Sterling to a much more visible person. When G. Ogden Nutting says something bad, it's just not going to get the play that it would if it came out of George Steinbrenner's mouth, instead. Schott was, from the very beginning, a very outspoken, public owner. Sterling never has been. Also, Schott provided a one-line soundbyte, which is roughly 1.6 jillion times juicier than a lawsuit over rental properties.

Your comparisons are consistently incomparable.

Also, you're assuming the situation is static. We have no idea if the story will receive more play if and when he's found guilty, and we have no idea how the NBA might react, if it reacts at all to such news.


Yes, it is an accusation. The fact that he's lost such a case before makes it pretty easy to guess whether or not there's anything to the accusation, but he's not guilty in this instance just because he was found guilty last time. They have, you know, a trial for this sort of thing.

Here's something else to keep in mind: the situations you've tried to compare Sterling's to have no layers of abstraction. They involve the owners or managers and their own public statements. The housing lawsuit came against one of Sterling's companies. It is relatively indirect compared to Schott dropping the N-bomb, or Guillen calling a reporter a "fag."


Take a chill pill. I misspoke. My apologies. I'd like to add, however, that's it's insanely silly to think that I was trying to pull one over on you. What was I supposed to be thinking, exactly? That I could intentionally flip a statement of less than a month ago for which there is a public, easily verifiable source 2 clicks away? Come on.

In addition to all of the above, there's a freakin' war going on in the Middle East, so even if you could somehow demonstrate that discrimation against Jews is receiving more attention than other forms of discrimation, you'd still be left to demonstrate that such an emphasis is unreasonable, given that those tensions are inevitably going to be higher at times like these.

Yoda,

Marge Schott had no media profile whatsoever before her comments about Eric Davis and Dave Parker. Her notoriety was entirely a product of her racist banter. Until then, she was just the absentee owner of a small market franchise. Donald Sterling, on the other hand, owns a team in the heart of the entertainment capital of the world, and he has been probably the most written about NBA owner over the last 15 years (with the possible exception of Jerry Reinsdorf), albeit mostly for his legendar parsimony. There's no way you can argue with a straight face that he has a lower profile than Schott did prior to her controversial comments.

This is flat-out untrue. "Absentee owner of a small market franchise"? They won the World Series two years before she made the comment in question. One year before the comment, Tim Sabo, former team controller for Cincinnati, said he lost his job for refusing to adhere to her policy not hiring black employees.

Even if we disregard all of this (which I don't think we can), my other points about the direct, un-filtered nature of the comment still apply.


I follow sports very carefully by most people's standards, and I didn't know crap about Sterling -- good or bad -- before this latest incident. Also, the fact that his team resides in the "entertainment capital of the world" is largely irrelevant, because a) the second-greatest team in NBA history plays its homes games in the same city, and b) his team has been the laughingstock of the league until just last season.

You mean "white America"? Thanks for speaking for me.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

So? It was the lowest rated World Series of the pre-strike era, and, like most Series, didn't substantially boost the media profile of the owners (does anyone even remember, off the top of their heads, who the owner of the Oakland A's was in 1990?). Schott was simply a non-issue until the comments in '92 - prior to that, the Reds had other, more important stories that dominated the coverage of the team (first Pete Rose, then the magical 1990 season, then the improbable series of injuries and free agent defections that turned the champs into chumps in 1991). It wasn't until '92 that Schott became THE story, and that was purely a product of her comments.

No, she wasn't THE story. But that wasn't what we were arguing. You initially claimed that she "had no media profile whatsoever" and was the "absentee owner of a small market franchise." Neither is remotely true; she was a very active owner of a recent Championship team with several marquee players who had already had one PR faux pas to her name from the year before.

Also, as I said before, even if I conceded that Schott and Sterling were on equal media-ground leading up to the two offenses in question (and I don't believe at all that they were), there are still several notable differences in the two transgressions, which I detailed earlier.

Yeah, and the words are normally far less significant to the media than proven histories of discrimination...except when the Chosen People are the ones doing the discrimination.

The only SIGNIFICANT difference is that Donald Sterling is a Jew, and Jews who run the media protect their own.

Based on what? This is not my experience. Both seem to be taken into account, but soundbytes have always been sexier than lawsuits. And in this instance, we're not even talking about a lawsuit against the man, but against one of his companies.

So, at this point, you've given up arguing points, and are content to make stark assertions. Okay then.

Purandara has been banned. If anyone wishes to see just why, drop me a PM or email and you'll receive it. I'm making this offer so that each member can see that he was allowed to state his case, and was banned only when he crossed the very last threshold of decency.

No I don't mean white America. I mean all America. Proof of that lies in my hometown. Three black children were killed by gang bullets with minimal coverage--a white boy died in the same situation and everyone cared.

Kind of like how 5 times as many lebenese die ina conflict..no one turns a shoulder but one israeli soldier gets kidnapped and its the biggest thing since fluffernutters.

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So what you are saying is that American's, all of them apparently, ability to care is equal to the sum of American media? I was not arguing the media part of your statement, just the part that defines "all" americans do not care, that is certainly untrue.

If the American public cared, the media would reflect it. The media reports what the publilc wants. But yes, perhaps "all" Americans is a bit hyperbolic. You're right.

I'm all for open discussion in general (that typically involves SENSIBLE people, however, not spiteful attention-getters who wield conspiracy theories like they were the Bible), but on any other forum I've ever visited (much less a forum about movies), this would have been deleted and sent straight to some neo-nazi angst website where it belongs. The more you humor this garbage, the more you're just letting it grow. Discussing Sterling as a bad owner? Great. Discussing the wretchedness of racism? More power to you. Owing his poor traits and the idea that the world could cover up such evil (despite the fact that we are actually sitting here talking about it... meaning the world must have done a pretty bad job) to the fact that he is this or that? Hate-speech.

And to think how many Jewish visitors you might lose as potential posters and members by letting this guy keep posting his wretched, anti-intellectualism here. Kind of sad, really. But, hey, maybe you don't want more members, posters, or visitors.

This is from the rules read upon registration, to which one must consent:

The above antisemite has made it quite clear of hateful meaning in numerous threads now, particularly with the comment that Jews "have what's coming to them," which can also be deemed threatening.

Of course, I'm not a mod. I'm just a poster who is going on hiatus.