In addition to the two examples from my satirical diary yesterday - Grading Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling's Racism on a Curve - where I noted that Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump had already come out in defense of Donald Sterling... saying that this was all the work of the Liberal Media and Obama
"This is not news to anybody who has known of this guy,” Limbaugh announced on Monday. “This guy’s a big Democrat. The only reason he’s in trouble right now is he did not give enough money to Obama.”
“All of this shock and outrage, it’s as phony as you can believe,”
Even though Donald Sterling is a Registered Republican. And the really bad bad baddy bad person here isn't Sterling, it's the girlfriend.
“It’s terrible, he got set up by a very bad girlfriend,” Trump opined. “Let’s face it. That whole thing is — she’s called the girlfriend from hell.
Yeah, she's just like this...
But now on the day that he's been Banned for Life by the League you a Fox News Reporter and a Conservative Pundit coming out and openly defending Donald Sterling...
Powerline Blog: Race-Baiters Strike Gold with Sterling
"The political motive to make Donald Sterling the poster boy for 21st century racism is obvious, but is he actually a racist?" Hinderaker wrote. "I have never met the man, but it doesn’t seem probable."
...
"He understands, but asks her not to embarrass him before his friends," Hinderaker wrote. "He may also be suffering from dementia. For a billionaire, he makes precious little sense on the tape(s). But then, most of us probably wouldn’t make much sense to outsiders if tapes of our domestic arguments were made public."
Hinderaker then accused "[r]ace hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson [of being] delirious with excitement." And he criticized President Obama for addressing the controversy over the weekend.
"A billionaire asks his African-American mistress not to post certain pictures on Instagram: is that what the 'legacy of race and slavery and segregation' has come down to?" Hinderaker wrote. "Are the 'vestiges of discrimination' so slight that this lovers’ spat is the subject of a presidential news conference?"
Yes, that's right - it's not like he
killed a teenager who was just trying to walk home from 7-11. Or a shot a man to death who was looking for help after a crash. Or blasted a woman in the face with a shotgun blast for knocking on someone front to to use the phone. It's not like any of THAT at all and yes the "Race Hustlers" have fallen so far they have to pick on poor little Donald Sterling in order finally find a "Real Racist".
I mean, how can the NBA set such a harsh precedent by kicking Sterling out for something so minor? That's how a Fox Reporter for the Megyn Kelly show put it when she asker Commissioner Silver about the decision to ban Sterling for life.
http://www.rawstory.com/...
Many journalists, like Inside Edition‘s Lisa Guerrero, wanted to know why the NBA had not acted sooner. Others wanted to know how quickly league owners could force Sterling to sell the LA Clippers.
But [Jo Ling] Kent [of Fox News] became the first to offer what sounded like a defense of the accused racist.
“Should someone lose their team for remarks shared in private?” she asked. “Is this a slippery slope?”
“Whether or not these remarks were initially shared in private, they are now public,” Silver explained. “And they represent his views.”
Here's the thing though. When people join the NBA they sign a contract that requires that they be good stewards and examples for the image of the League. That means not just players but also owners. People like Mark Cuban have paid hundreds of $Thousands in Fines for off the cuff remarks. Some made on the court doing a game and some simply reported in the press.
http://www.eskimo.com/...
7/9/13 The NBA fined Houston $150,000 for commenting about LA Lakers' free agent Dwight Howard's agreement to join the Rockets - league rules state that teams can not publically talk about free agents until the July Moratorium ends.
10/11/10 The NBA fined Rudy Fernandez (Por) $50,000 for public comments his agent made that the league said were detrimental to the NBA. Fernandez agent again stated Fernandez's desire to be released.
9/29/10 The NBA fined Washington owner Ted Leonsis $100,000 for unauthorized
public comments regarding the collective bargaining negotiations. Leonsis said that he expects the next CBA to have a hard cap.
3/17/04 The NBA fined Mark Cuban (Dal owner) $10,000 for "inappropriate public
comments". Cuban had told a reporter that he had said to Josh Howard (Dal)
during the March 5 game at San Antonio that Cuban would pay the fine if Howard got a technical if Howard would smack the ball out of Bruce Bowen's (SA) hands and cause the ball to hit Bowen in the face.
12/15/05 The NBA fined Ron Artest (Ind) $10,000 for making public statements detrimental to the NBA for his public statement that he wanted to be traded.
12/6/03 The NBA fined Don Nelson (Dal) $7,500 for criticizing the refs. Nelson questioned how the refs would treat Danny Fortson following Fortson's flagrant foul and said that the refs still treat Eduardo Najera different as a result of Najera's inadvertent bump of a ref last season.
So if fining and suspending people for their comments - private or not - is a "Slippery Slope" then the NBA is already more than half-way down that Hill in a Rocket Sled.
And mark my words: the GOP will not be able to help themselves from having Sympathy For the Bigot, just as they did with Zimmerman, as they did with Officer Crawley who arrested Skip Gates for breaking into his own house, just as some of them like Limbaugh continue to do with Cliven Bundy, because that's just who they are.
Vyan
Wed Apr 30, 2014 at 12:38 AM PT: Wasn't expecting this to get rec'd. Glad it happened because I like to at least have people see what I've said, and hopefully share if with others if it's at least decent - and I always try to be be at least decent and memorable. Thx.