Racism as a Weapon

Yeah, I decided I'm not quite done with the whole Donald Sterling thing yet. I started it here.

As I've previously stated, I don't condone his remarks. That sort of anachronistic racism in this day & age is a deplorable thing. But some things are still nagging at me that the Lamestream Media wants to ignore.

He said what he said in the privacy of his own home. He was recorded likely without his knowledge given his alleged dementia which in the People's Republik of Kalifornia is a crime and certainly inadmissable in a court case.

However there will be no court case here as the NBA is using this as an excuse to stage a coup, a hostile takeover of sorts, to unseat a massively unpopular owner and replace the Sterlings with someone who will more readily do their bidding, including moving the team to another city where the League can reap more filthy lucre and not have two teams in the same city competing for fans.

The NBA claims that Sterling caused damage to the League with his mere words. Oh, by the way, the doddering old git said "black people". He didn't hurl any epithets. He didn't say anything along the lines of the slurs one expects from racists like "coon" or "spook" or the dreaded N-word...instead the players just refer to each other as "nigga" all up and down the court but that's allowable.

So because an old, mentally-enfeebled Jewish billionaire said he didn't want his sugar-baby mistress bringing black people to his games, the League will shed fans? America will cease to watch all NBA games, TV contracts will be ripped up, no one will buy jerseys or sneakers or hats or video games and the League will go belly up because this guy said "black people"? I doubt that very, very much. Hell, that cursive-illiterate kid on the stand at the Zimmerman trial referred to white people as Crackers...Creepy-Ass Crackers at that... and that was okay. It's okay because racism is only racism if it's against blacks. If it's directed at Dem White Debbils it's just Whitey getting what's coming to right the wrongs of 150 years ago.

Her shoes cost more than I make in a week.

While having racist thoughts is a shame, it's not a crime. See, Donald Sterling committed no actual crime under the statutes of the state in which he resides, although his little chippy may have. She'll get away with it scot-free and walk, and then write a tell-all book (ghost-written because she's seemingly dumb as a bowl of hair) and she'll rake in the bucks and move on to another sugar daddy while the Sterlings (who ain't hurting for money) lose their team. Sterling wasn't arrested because he committed no crime. This sets the precedent for people to lose their primary sources of income based on thoughts and words and not actual criminal actions. 

What should instead be harming the League is the spate of players who do commit actual crimes, who get arrested, who make the NBA and their clubs look bad in the press and in the eyes of little kids who mistakenly look at sports figures as role models, and then just go on playing the game and making themselves and others filthy rich.

Like who?

Kendrick Perkins of the Oklahoma City Thunder. On October 10, 2013 While leaving a nightclub, Perkins’ car bumped into another automobile.  An altercation followed, where Perkins punched both a male and a female passenger in the head, and was subsequently arrested for assault.  This was his second career arrest, both with the Thunder. He's currently playing in the NBA Western Conference championships.

Back in April, police were called to Dante Cunningham’s home at 4am where they found his girlfriend with marks consistent with a physical assault, and arrested him. He allegedly choked her for 15-20 seconds and slammed her against a wall.  This was his second arrest since becoming a pro and first in nearly 3 years.(This wasn't his first rodeo. In April of 2011 after being pulled over for speeding and reckless driving, police discovered marijuana and a loaded BB gun and placed Cunningham under arrest. He kept on playing for the Charlotte Bobcats.) Just three days later, Cunningham was again arrested for violating a protection order and sending her threatening text messages. Cunningham kept right on playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves.

In February of this year Raymond Felton of the Knicks kept right on playing after an arrest on two gun charges.Back in September of last year Jared Sullinger of the Boston Celtics was arrested for assault & battery, malicious destruction of property and intimidation of a witness. Sullinger turned himself in several days after  assaulting his girlfriend following an argument after she found evidence on his cell phone that he was cheating on her.  His girlfriend started packing her bags to leave when Sullinger pushed her onto a bed, pinned her, then tossed her onto the ground before smashing her cell phone. And young Jared continued to play for the Celtics.

Dennis Rodman had a stellar NBA career. He has been arrested twice for domestic violence, twice for drunken driving, obstructing justice, domestic dispute, and had police come to his house over 70 times for noise violations at his Newport Beach house. But he's so beloved a figure that he's an unofficial ambassador to North Korea.

How many arrests did Allen Iverson have? LOTS. And kept on playing.

DeShawn Stevenson was arrested, accused of and convicted of statutory rape. In 2001 as a rookie with the Utah Jazz, Stevenson admitted to taking a 14-year-old girl back to a hotel room, getting her drunk and having consensual sex with her. He continued to play on various teams till the end of the 2012/2013 season, and won an NBA Championship with the Dallas Mavericks in 2010.

And while he wasn't convicted, Kobe Bryant was arrested in connection to rape. He's continued to rake in tens of millions over the years, mostly using it to lavish his wife with gifts to keep her off his ass.

The list goes on and on and on. However, it's not just the NBA. The NFL is guilty of it too.

Michael Boley was arrested for child abuse, still plays for the Bengals. There's a video of Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee from an elevator and he still plays for the Ravens. Akib Talib has a series of assault arrests and keeps on playing for the Broncos.A month after he was suspended four games for violating the substance abuse policies, Darrell Washington was arrested for the aggravated assault of his girlfriend, and kept on playing for the Cardinals. Aldon Smith had a DUI arrest in 2012, a pot and DUI arrest after a wreck in 2013, and then three felony counts of possession of an assault weapon, and keeps on playing for the 49ers. Michael Vick tortured dogs to death and was welcomed back to the NFL. After serving jail time for weapons charges stemming from the time when he shot himself in the leg, the league welcomed back Plaxico Burress.

Baseball? Yeah, them too. Yasiel Puig has a spate of reckless driving arrests and there's no way in hell the Dodgers are going to bench him. Speaking of the Dodgers, another of their players, pitcher Chris Perez, plead no contest after he and his wife were arrested after receiving a shipment of pot in the mail. While with the Dodgers, infielder Justin Sellers was arrested for reckless driving when he was doing wheelies on his motorcycle in a residential neighborhood and then fled the cops when they arrived. Now he's in Cleveland with the Indians, the team Perez was with when he got the pot in the mail. Most baseball players just get busted for DUI and stuff like that. But Delmon Young was arrested  in New York when he was playing for the Detroit Tigers in 2012. Around 1:30 in the morning Young was standing outside a hotel and a group of four tourists staying at the same hotel were approached by a panhandler wearing a yarmulke and a Star of David around his neck. As the group of tourists walked to the hotel doors Young allegedly yelled anti-Semitic epithets. Young then got into an altercation with the group of tourists. One of the tourists sustained scratches to his elbows. But it can't be racism because Young is black and it was just a Jewish panhandler...right? No need to make this a big deal. That's why he still plays for the Orioles and Donald Sterling is going to lose his team.

And to be fair, even my beloved sport of hockey has dirty hands. Patrick Kane was arrested after he and two friends beat up a cabbie over twenty cents and he's still in the Stanley Cup race. Avalanche goalie Semyon Varlamov kept on playing this year after an early-season arrest on domestic violence. Following an arrest for operating a boat under the influence, Dustin Byfuglien continues to play for the Jets. The NHL allowed Dany Heatley to come back after he wrecked his Ferrari 360 Modena speeding through Atlanta, a wreck that killed team mate Dan Snyder.

But the NBA is, in my opinion, using racism as their weapon of choice to topple a guy they simply don't like and take his team. And while it's hard as hell to feel sorry for a philandering billionaire who's taken a team he bought for $12 million and parleyed it into a franchise that will sell for over a billion, Uncle Sucker is gonna ass-rape him for Capital Gains Taxes on the money hell make on the sale, so the taxes he'll pay out on the sale will likely be twice what he PAID for the team.

Some say former Clipper Grant Hill is putting together a team of backers to buy it. That will give the NBA a coveted black owner. Oprah Winfrey, David Geffen and Larry Ellison are rumored to be looking at the team.. That trio is pretty much the definition of deep pockets. Any one of them could buy a team and Ellison has tried in the past and together they have money and star power. Oprah knows how to play the race card, gives the NBA a black female owner, and no one tells Queen O no.

Who else is in the rumor mill? Rick Caruso. A developer whose name is not known all that well outside Los Angeles, but in L.A. he’s the guy that owns the Grove. He was in the running to buy the Dodgers but lost out. Patrick Soon-Shiong is another name not known outside L.A. but the medical researcher and business man is the richest man in Los Angeles, worth $9.8 billion.That's even more than Oprah is worth. He already owners four percent of Lakers, so he has been through the league’s ownership vetting process. However owning part or all of two competing franchises may be a conflict of interests.

The current front-runner is Magic Johnson and the Guggenheim group. Also known as the poetic justice bid since the picture Sterling's girlfriend took that started this whole mess was with Johnson. This is a group the league would love to see own the team — they already own the Dodgers (having won a sealed bid process much like the league might use, beating out Rick Caruso mentioned above.), they have one of the most iconic personalities in Los Angeles as the front man, they have the money via the other guys in the group, and it serves as a bigg EFF YOU kick in the balls for Donald Sterling as he is pushed out the door.

My money however is on Yao Ming. Yao is getting together a group of Chinese investors to make a bid.  The former Houston Rockets All-Star center owns the Shanghai Sharks in his native country and has maintained close ties to the NBA through the league's various initiatives in Asia. Yao was seriously interested in purchasing the recently-sold Milwaukee Bucks, sources say, but dropped out of the bidding when outgoing Milwaukee owner Herb Kohl made keeping the team in that city mandatory for any new owner. The Bucks were ultimately sold to Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry for a purchase price of $550 million.

But why Yao? It gives the NBA a minority owner who was also a player, and opens up China and it's 1.35 billion people and huge economy even farther to the NBA's lust for money and power. If they move the team to Seattle, there's a huge Asian population in the Northwest too. Tell me they aren't just taking action because Sterling is a racist? PLEASE. Don't be naive.

A lifetime achievement award from the NAACP and was about to get a second one before this fracas, a black coach and a team that's 90% black that he pays millions to in a sport wildly popular with the black population of America, and a mistress who is half black. If he's that racist ( and by that racist I mean so racist he's damaged an entire sports league and caused PTSD-like symptoms in a wide swath of humanity) why even associate with that which he so detests? Makes no sense.

Racism. The new weapon to get your way whether it be in business or politics. Allege racism, call the press, and get what you want. The new American Way.