Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
(Post 897942)
I don't follow basketball, but you would have to be living under a rock to not hear about this story.
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Understatement of the day, sheeeesh!
Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
(Post 897942)
A rich old ugly white man basically pays an attractive young mixed-race woman to be his girlfriend and be with him sexually, but treats her with contempt and makes blatantly racist comments to her. She records these and other comments for him because he has a bad memory, but she releases them to the public. He happens to own a professional basketball team, and the particularly racist comment in question is where he tells her to stop bringing her black friends to the games.
Everyone is outraged at his racist statements and the head of the basketball organization bans him from the game for life and fines him $2.5 million. The NBA head also is actively trying to force him to sell his basketball team.
So those are the basic facts.
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Good summary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
(Post 897942)
I think this guy is a jerk, and has been a jerk for much of his life. I completely disagree with his actions. (Both the buying very expensive gifts for the girl only when she satisfies him with good sex, and the racist comments.) And I find myself being outraged, along with everyone else.
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Yep, you and I are still on the same page.
Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
(Post 897942)
But I wonder about this. Actually, I don't wonder. We have this thing in our country called the Constitution. And the 1st Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. This asshole was in his own house, talking to his girlfriend. He wasn't shouting "fire" in a movie theater. He wasn't calling for the assassination of anyone. He wasn't breaking any of those speech laws. He was simply expressing his fucked up opinions. The 1st Amendment is not needed to protect speech that everyone agrees with. It's there for speech that is shocking and perhaps unpopular. His speech is exactly what the 1st Amendment is there to protect.
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Stop.
Put the car in *park*.
Nothing has happened that has abridged anyone's First Amendment Rights, nothing for no one.
The First Amendment (among other things) guarantees Free Speech (tm), and that means that the Government can't make any laws that inhibit you expressing yourself.
Here's the text:
Quote:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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I agree that the First Amendment needed to protect unpopular speech, and Silver's speech is the fucking posterchild of unpopular speech. And his speech **IS** protected. He would be a fool and a loser (in court) if he tried to use as his defense for his speech that his First Amendment Rights were being violated. They're not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
(Post 897942)
I know the NBA is a business. And as a business, it needed to respond in some way to his offensive remarks so it could distance itself from him. I know the NBA Commissioner has the authority to fine members of the NBA, and to ban people. But I think that this is out of control. The angry mob had their pitchforks and their torches, and they wanted blood. The Commissioner gave it to them/us. It's about the mob's blood lust and NBA's profits.
Meanwhile a guy who only said something in his own fucking house is having his pathetic life destroyed.
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The NBA is a business, and the businessmen that have organized themselves into a group made membership in that group contingent on obedience to a certain set of rules, and Silver broke one, namely: "conduct ... detrimental to the Association"
Here's a link to their constitution. They've hired Commissioner Adam Silver (defeating the evil Donald Sterling.... there's ... something there, I just can't get at it...) specifically to run the organization of owners. His job is to police his bosses (and all the people that work for those bosses). He's doing that, using the rules and authority granted to him BY Donald Sterling and his peers. Nothing to see here, move on.
Of course it's about the NBA's profits. Just as it would be with any other franchise operation. If the local Subway sandwich shop started something awful like this, cast the Subway name in a bad light, as Sterling has done with the NBA, Subway would have a compelling interest to protect the value of their brand, just as the NBA is doing.
I'm with the mob on this one for two reasons. One, Donald Sterling is a spectacularly unsympathetic character and your statement that his life pathetic is being destroyed is unconvincing. He bought the Clippers for $12 million and they're currently valued at something like $700 million. Cry me a fucking river. And two, I think his behavior/speech *IS* deplorable, and I wholeheartedly deplore it. Where's my torch and pitchfork?
