Dear America

"Liberals are all race-baiters anyway, and the whole Donald Sterling case is less about racism (which makes no financial sense for an NBA owner) and all about his gold-digging whore mistress.  At best it's a domestic dispute, and at worst he's being set up by Obama and the NAACP.  It's Reverse Racism Othello, with a poor old doddering man.  I don't see what the fuss is about."

--John Hinderaker, Power Line

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

This sad domestic drama has become the best evidence the Left can come up with of the ongoing legacy of slavery and discrimination. It merits denunciation by the President of the United States, who locates the old man’s sad story in the grand sweep of history.

On the tape, Donald Sterling says, “I love the black people.” I can’t vouch for his sincerity, but there is nothing in the DMZ/Deadspin tapes that belies that sentiment. It is telling that this domestic upheaval between an aging billionaire and his gold-digging, disloyal mistress represents the best the Left can come up with to support its claim that racism and the “legacy of race and slavery and segregation” is alive and well. As for Sterling, he is merely collateral damage. That Lifetime Achievement award was almost in his grasp, when he became more useful to the Left as a villain. Something tells me, however, that Stiviano will land on her feet.

So because it doesn't make financial sense to be a racist sports franchise owner, it ergo cannot be racism, because certainly the NBA wouldn't look the other way with a billionaire owner or anything for 30 years.

What Hinderaker doesn't understand about racism and discrimination could fill the Library of Congress, but the bottom line is that there's a power component to racism.  Being a billionaire NBA owner, a club of 30 such billionaires, definitely fits the "power" definition to me.  The NBA doesn't want an ugly mess on its hands or to damage its multi-billion dollar brand, so old man Sterling gets a pass and has for three decades.  He gets to keep owning the team until such point as he craps the bed and hurts the league and all the other owners.  He gets to employ black players who make him a lot of money, and a black head coach in Doc Rivers who has gotten his team into the playoffs.  Staples built him a new stadium.  Power and privilege is awesome.

And Hinderaker dismisses it, because for him to admit that racism still exists would blow a hole in all of his high horse nonsense.  To him it's just his "gold-digging, disloyal mistress" getting revenge.

But it's never racism when a white person with billions does it.  Can't be.