Adam Silver Signals Again Oad Era About to End
Mark Steyn: Donald Sterling's remarks were bad, simply what the NBA is doing is much worse
Should a person accept their holding taken from them over views expressed in the course of a two-minute rant at his mistress about the other guys she pals around with?
Three years ago, I wrote in National Review:
Let us accept for the sake of argument that racism is bad, that homophobia is bad, that Islamophobia is bad, that offensive utterances are bad, that mean-spirited thoughts are bad. So what? Every bit bad as they are, the government'due south criminalizing all of them and setting up an enforcement regime in the interests of micro-regulating united states into compliance is a thousand times worse.
Besides, equally bad every bit Donald Sterling is, what the NBA is doing is a thousand times worse:
"The views expressed by Mr. Sterling are deeply offensive and harmful. That they came from an NBA owner only heightens the damage and my personal outrage," [Commissioner Adam] Silver said. "I am banning Mr. Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers clan or the NBA. Mr. Sterling may not attend any NBA games or practices, he may not exist present at any Clippers facility, and he may non participate in any business organisation or decisions involving the team."
Everyone seems to agree that Sterling is a racist and always has been: He said he wouldn't rent apartments to blacks because they smell; and he has referred to the players of his Los Angeles Clippers as "niggers". All this has apparently been widely known for years, although not then well known that the NAACP hasn't lavished multiple awards on him, including his now hastily canceled Lifetime Achievement Award. Which seems odd.
[np_storybar title="Christie Blatchford: Adam Argent the rare leader who did the right thing with confidence in punishing Donald Sterling" link="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/04/29/christie-blatchford-adam-silverish-the-rare-leader-who-did-the-right-thing-with-conviction-in-punishing-donald-sterling/"]So rare is information technology in the mod earth to see a leader — in government, business organization, public or individual sector or anywhere in between — do the right thing with conviction that it is almost unrecognizable when it happens.
Enter Adam Argent, the new NBA commissioner, who Tuesday announced that the disgraced Los Angeles Clippers' owner, Donald Sterling, is immediately banned for life from whatever clan with the team he owns and the NBA — banned from games, practices, buildings, team meetings and decisions and lath of governor activities.
Go along reading…
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But Mr. Sterling'southward peerless record for Extraordinary Achievement in Racism is not the reason he has been banned for life by Commissioner Silver. Mr Silver is exiling Sterling only considering of what he said in a private shouting-match with his mistress recorded without his knowledge and leaked to the press. As I understand information technology, owning an NBA franchise is roughly analogous to owning a dwelling house in a gated community, and Commissioner Argent is the enforcer from the homeowners' clan. Even so, it is agonizing to meet (as Pecker Quick put information technology) "the utilize of a man's property be taken from him considering of the fashion he expressed himself." And not just whatsoever property simply a billion-dollar belongings the man has owned for a third of a century. Solely over views expressed in the course of a 2-infinitesimal rant at his mistress about the other guys she pals around with.
Before the decision, Bill Maher tweeted:
I'thousand not so sure being an asshole is nonetheless legal in America. Mr. Silver has too fined Sterling $ii.5 million – for something he said in his own home recorded without his cognition. Kareem Abdul Jabar:
"Didn't we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen'southward privacy in such an un-American mode..? The making and release of this tape is and so sleazy that only listening to information technology makes me experience like an accomplice to the crime."
In a costless guild you should be able to make racist remarks in private without being fined and losing your property rights. Considering the alternative is worse.
Years ago, I met with a Russian oligarch, which is to say a human being far richer than Donald Sterling, and with enough of enemies. At the get-go of the meeting, everyone switched off their mobile phones and put them on the table. And then I did, too. Then everyone removed the SIM cards. Which I'd never seen anyone do before, simply plain was routine to these chaps. So I fumbled with the back of my telephone, and got mine out, too. And afterwards I did something wrong trying to jam the card dorsum in, and the thing never worked again. Which didn't really carp me, as I barely brand one cell phone call a calendar month. But I was struck past the fashion these Russkie fellows lived their lives on the assumption that, wherever you were, whatsoever you were doing, in that location was always someone trying to record you, trying to go the goods on you lot.
Professional bodies in civilized societies should not exist lending respectability to this practice. Technology is moving us inexorably into a world with less privacy. A globe with no privacy at all – no privacy even to bawl out a lover – volition change human behavior, and not in a good way. Donald Sterling's weirdly refined sense of propriety derives in part from the bubble in which extremely rich men alive, specially in America. The cautionary tale of his downfall will serve to drive the rich, only out of self-protection, into even deeper insulation from ordinary life. That'south not a good thing.
National Post
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Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/mark-steyn-donald-sterlings-remarks-were-bad-but-what-the-nba-is-doing-is-much-worse
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