Wednesday, April 30, 2014
The Donald Sterling Matter
A thumbnail summary for the few troglodytes out there - LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life by the NBA Commissioner for making racist comments in a private conversation with his ex-girlfriend. She kinda looks like a model and he looks like a sagging bag of flesh so the word golddigger comes to mind but I digress. What if you went to your uncle's place of employment and said to his boss "you know what Joe said when he came over on Thanksgiving?" Many people have conservative Dads, do you want EVERYTHING leaking out about what was said in the living room especially after the goblet's been sipped a few times? OK you say the uncle is not a millionaire who owns a sports team so episodes like this is gonna churn out the usual pc self-righteous commentary. I already know you never said anything stupid in your life, hell you could smoke ten joints in a row and nothing stupid's gonna come out 'cause your software programming is so right on. Maybe it's because Al Sharpton has predictably involved himself in this case so I reflexively go the other way, dunno. OK throw your coins into the fountain:)
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First he has a long history of being racist. Second if you call your boss bad names in a private conversation and he finds out he will probably fire you. My question is if you hate black people why is your girlfriend half black and why do you own a sports team?
ReplyDeleteAnd of course this has spawned a fresh wave of idiocy from those who think that the First Amendment means you aren't responsible for the dumb stuff you are free to say....
ReplyDeleteI guess I fall into the Idiot category then.
ReplyDeleteAgain though Privacy only seems to relate to issues like abortion. Speech? meh.
ReplyDeleteWe go through this every time. You are free to say whatever you like. You REMAIN RESPONSIBLE for the CONSEQUENCES of your speech.
ReplyDeleteWhy do people have such a hard time with such a simple concept?
Fifteen minutes of fame, like Hannitiy's Nevada Rancherdude. Yeah, talk in the workplace though. Back when I was a kid chemist, I got a new boss. He didn't know crap, but would come by my office and run his hand over the blinds like he was looking for dust, or something. I discussed it with contemporaries and doggone if
ReplyDeletethe new boss didn't come by to chat about his being "stupid and finicky". Thought
I would be on the outside looking in, but in the following couple of years I got promoted twice and the guy wrote me a swell recommendation. (and kept my
views to myself)
It's like this: the First Amendment says you are free to tell the world you're going to shoot the President. The First Amendment DOES NOT protect you from the Secret Service who are going to come and get you for communicating a threat about the President.
ReplyDeleteYou can say whatever you want, but you will reap the consequences. Therefore, think before thou speakest, o troglodyte, for the moment of speech is short and the term of jail is long.
Naturally, I'm not going to defend anyone whose net worth is $1.9 billion; he's got lawyers for that.
ReplyDeleteI simply would allow more stuff to be said than you and BB would ESPECIALLY things said in private.
ReplyDeleteAlso you're forgetting the Sharpton Effect here, once he involves himself I almost out of bias take the opposite position. Like he never talked smack about Jews.
ReplyDeleteI take Sharpton about as seriously as I take Hannity...these guys are partisans waiting for the next thing to jump on. Sterling has a long record
Deleteof suits and legal actions concerning his operations as a slumlord and is,
IMO a prefect example of too much money and not enough brains.
Which begs the question WHY the NAACP was gonna honor him TWICE with a Lifetime Achievement Award?
Delete**I simply would allow more stuff to be said than you and BB would ESPECIALLY things said in private.**
ReplyDeleteThis is the part you don't get. NOTHING IS DISALLOWED. You are free to say whatever you want. But once those words come out, then you are responsible for the repercussions. If your employer has a boggle with what you say, if your words might cost them sponsors or public relations or any kind of monetary gain, they're probably going to fire you, and that has nothing to do with the First Amendment. People just don't get it: you are free to say what you want, but once those words come out of your mouth, it's your circus, your monkeys and you have to pay for whatever they break.
Freedom to ACT doesn't mean freedom from REPERCUSSION.
Why don't you get this?
PS: an employer firing someone because they don't like what they said, or in this case, because any kind of affiliation with someone who holds those views will cost them sponsorship, fanship and ultimately lots of money.... is called the FREE MARKET. Isn't that what all yall conservatives are about?
ReplyDeleteAs usual there's a misinterpretation here. Whenever an episode like this comes up I always get accused of coming to the "defense" of someone. Not so I'm merely mulling over the nature of private speech, living room chatter if you will. I'm no lawyer, I'm no legal expert but let's say you're walking with your friend on the bike path and you say among many topics that day that your boss is a dick. Just then a jogger passes you who knows your boss and it gets back to him and he fires you or harasses you 'twould seem to me to be wrong to terminate you. We all need our space, our private bubble.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing illegal between you, your friend, the jogger and the boss;
Deletejust a couple of folks between you calling your boss a dick to his face, really.
Free speech: down in Texas, four young Moms met at a restaurant to discuss the 'gun' problem. They boys got word of it and 20 of them stood
outside the entrance with AR-15s. The owner was so concerned he called
911. Like Yonkers, they weren't interested, announcing that the Moms were
exercising their 1st Amendment rights and so were the guys with toys. We recall the elderly nuns arrested and sentenced for standing in front of an ammo mfg with signs protesting depleted uranium. But in our current age,
with all the electronic communication, just about every tweet or phonecon
seems to be fair game.
Another twisting of my words here -- I've never said there should never be any repercussions for certain speech I'm merely throwing out there should we always have repercussions for this kind of speech? Just putting on the table that maybe even as an experiment let's just roll with Free Speech and see what happens. Is the world gonna cave in? WHY are we so insecure about speech? what are we threatened by? DEAL WITH IT!
ReplyDeleteWe HAVE Free Speech. What we do not have is SPEECH WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES.
ReplyDeleteOf course you both realize in the State of CA it is illegal to tape someone w/o their consent, something getting lost in the racial shuffle here.
ReplyDeleteSugar Daddy apparently agreed to the taping , whatever the legality.
DeleteOK but that's her saying that. Reminds me of Christie's in-depth "investigation" of his own scandal and his lawyer said tada nothing here re Christie.
DeleteSo you wouldn't mind Saty if I were in your living room, you said to your friend something untoward about this or that and I reported you to your boss?
ReplyDelete& that's my whole point, I think you agree with me here. It's just that when we're dealing with the Rich and Powerful we feel differently. The guy could mutter in his sleep and it'd be held against him.
ReplyDeleteIf private speech becomes public then you have to deal with the consequences of it. If I have a private conversation with my supervisor (like I had today) and we get overheard and something I've said can be and is used against me.. that's my fault for talking too loud or not shutting the door.
ReplyDeleteIt's illegal to tape someone without their consent. So? We're not in court. None of this is happening in court. It's the machinations of the free market, beloved of conservatives, at work in real time.
It's kind of a coerced free market though because of the undue power of pc. Of course you can make the case that pc is a part of the free market.
DeleteMaybe it's not all that immediate for me. Honestly I'm more concerned about all the dead cats in Yonkers but that doesn't get 24/7 coverage. Donald Sterling is simply the latest hobgoblin.
ReplyDeleteThe power of the public 's opinion is what powers the free market. In this case the predictable public bliwbach and subsequent exodus of sponsors was enough to cause the NBA to act hard and fast. Hesitation would have tarnished the whole league in the eyes of the public and that equals lost dollars. Theyre trying to protect their bottom line.
ReplyDelete& I would posit much of the public is too busy working two or three jobs to become that caught up with a rich old fool who has cancer and owns a sports team. Was everyone polled on this?
DeleteNot an NBA fan, but the polls seem to divide according to politics . Sort of like the Nevada rancher polls. The only polls I get asked on are about consumer electronics and fastfood...apparently more important stuff.
DeleteBasically I'm asked to review apps, nothing more grave than that. Now put Donald Sterling in the form of an app and I'm all a-go.
DeleteOf your two links I was pondering this myself why there's a partisan divide on the Sterling matter. Personally and this wasn't mentioned in the link but I think a BIG factor among conservatives is they see inconsistency on the part of liberals, selective indignation. For instance for every Sterling there are ten others who get away with similar stuff (e.g. Jay-Z using the N-word). I'm just sayin' consistency is a biggie in our book.
DeleteYou forget pro sports is a huge industry. The sponsors are huge. Theres a significant population that follows this stuff and the NBA in particular is a big fashion influence with kids,sneakers etc. They wouldnt move so fast if the stakes werent high.
ReplyDelete& yet Shaq can make fun of some kid with some rare genetic defect and post it. Apparently not too many of them repercussion things.
DeleteBTW I'm trying to respond to both of you at the same time I'm trying to understand a wiki article on handicap systems in golf. It ain't easy.
ReplyDeleteIt's like the lady said on one of those talking head shows..."there is no such thing as
ReplyDeleteprivacy anymore" Reminds me of Idaho's hermit, Buckskin Billy, back in the day up in the mountains. He got so many visitors and tourists he had to sell tickets.
First there was your google web history (I looked up hemorrhoids that day?) and now the Cloud and you can't sit there and tell me that only I can see my own stuff. C'mon!
DeleteWhat bugs me about Sterling is for every Sterling punished and made an example of there are ten others who get away with stuff (see Shaq above). If you're gonna go after stuff go after everyone.
ReplyDeleteGood point. The stuff politicians spout about each other is, IMO, egregious,
Deletemade-up and slanderous. Not only perfectly legal, but it increases their popularity with their loyal followers.
Available information, just floating in e-clouds up there. Hobbyists sort and arrange for your convenience: like oh, say, NYC's worst landlords , along with numbers and types of violations and featured reviews. More crap out there than we can keep in our head. Singularity, Z-Man..it's coming.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the Singularity again BB? BTW I was also pondering why when it comes to walkers for seniors some women go with the two tennis balls in the back and some don't. A matter of taste I guess.
DeleteSingularity is that moment in time when artificial intelligence surpasses that of the human (yeah, I know, it already has in many cases). Beyond that point,
Deletepredictions of the future become tenuous. For example, if a human racist
makes remarks about Robot #87B18, will it be unnoticed, or will such
be punished by a colonoscopy by the DaVinci robotic surgery device?
A favorite pastime among computer geeks is predicting the date of the singularity...many thinking around 2040-2060, My favorite, and probably
the most accurate was the guy who said "There is a definite 87% chance
of singularity between 2038 and 3010, more or less". Glad I have no cellphone, don't need it turning on me some day!
We were also discussing over the weekend male-on-male sex among prisoners. We all agreed that they're not really homosexuals (oh I forget, according to Maureen Dowd I'm not supposed to use that word) as when they get out of prison they turn hetero again. So I said if you're not really attracted as a man to other men in the first place why have sex with other men in prison? I mean if it's not in your nature how much can you get out of it so she goes "yeah but they figure it's better than nothing." I think this is a classic case of nothing is sometimes better than something:)
ReplyDeleteArticle in today's local newspaper about an 83 year old woman prisoner.
DeleteAll the young women are deferential to her, covering their tattoos, cleaning
up their language and not kissing each other in her presence. So, I'm guessing the prison sex thing occurs among both genders. A case for coed
prisons? In the Nazi concentrations camps, homosexuals wore a pink triangle and were housed separately. Not sure if they were any happier than the other starving beaten prisoners, though.
Any port in a storm as they say.....
ReplyDeleteBut still...ok you're an absolute recluse/hermit. You never heard of Donald Sterling or Katy Perry and you live on a farm...
ReplyDeleteI don't live on a farm :) I wish I did. We almost did: before we found this property we found a farm about 5 miles from here. It was built in 1897, came with 12 acres, 2 outbuildings and a barn, had five fireplaces and no central heat or air. Scott made me crawl underneath it to see how rotten the joists were and to prove it would cost us thousands just to bring it up to decent living level. I cried for an entire day. It's on my commute to work so I get tormented by it twice daily five days a week. In retrospect it was the right choice. We do live surrounded by farms and fields. The closest fields to us are just a couple hundred feet down the road. They rotate between sorghum, soybeans, and corn.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day one of the favorite haunts of the black widow spider was under the rim in the old outhouse. "Honey I'll be right back."
ReplyDeleteThoughts on Monica? Personally I think she got a raw deal. The Clinton's fortunes are always going up and she can barely muster a career. Most she did I believe was become a handbag designer.
ReplyDeleteWonder if she has tried advertising for the cigar business?
DeleteShe had a couple choice words for Beyonce. Actually Beyonce is getting on everyone's nerves of late.
DeleteRubbed tung oil into my favorite outdoor swing yesterday. Got to investigating tung oil. Seems it is mostly eleostearic acid, a chemical which causes apoptosis in fat
ReplyDeletecells (programmed cell suicide). Seemed like a good thing, and indeed med research on nude mice with induced tumors shows significant DNA fragmentation
and specific tumor reduction. Body builders are huge fans of killing fat cells, but it
turns out that fat cells perform some essential physiological functions. In addition to energy storage and retrieval, fatty tissues secrete macrophage cells which are important to immunity, and they regulate glucose homeostasis. My question is, will
my googling of "nude mice" lurk around the electronic information cloud for eternity?
You might have better immunity but you'll look unsightly in the buff. It's a tradeoff.
DeleteSo the big Sadhusanga festival (http://www.sadhusangaretreat.com/) is coming up and I am anxious as hell. This comes at the end of our vacation in the mountains and is virtually guaranteed to set me off for the entire summer. I have signed up to cook in as many spots as I thought I could get away with (when it comes to the HKs, sucking up all the opportunities for service is considered kinda greedy) but I am going to check back in a couple days to see if there are any open spots left. The whole cooking thing is actually very good and grounding and stabilizing for me because it's structured and I won't be just wandering about aimlessly chanting rounds and in and out of kirtans. Anyway, I'm getting all keyed up, so I'm just giving yall an advance notice.
ReplyDeleteGuy at work accidentally made curried chicken salad one day. He had the chopped up chicken, celery and mayo all in a big mixing bowl and instead of celery seeds he accidentally got a small curry powder off the shelf. He didn't know it at the time being Albanian but we explained to him he actually made a classic Indian dish.
DeleteDo you know I have never used 'curry powder'? Every Indian recipe has lots of spices, a masala, but I have never seen 'curry powder' in any of them.
ReplyDeleteI have signed up so far for 22 hours service, we'll see if I can get a few more in there. Even if I can't officially sign up I can always hang around the kitchen to see if they need some extra hands.
What think you of the Moroccan dish couscous?
ReplyDelete