NBA basketball team owner banned for life

[glatt]

I don't follow basketball, but you would have to be living under a rock to not hear about this story.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[infinite monkey]

The word on the street is that she recorded him legally, as his 'archivist' she recorded their conversations because he would forget things. I guess she can't write down pertinent information as it becomes available. I will stop short of any rant, here, about this woman. My thoughts would certainly be un-pc.

As abhorrent as Sterling is, and keeping in mind the fact that the NBA is fully within its rights in their punishment, I think we do ourselves a disservice to just accept this woman's actions as status quo. Sure, we live in a world where privacy is precarious, but I don't think we should just accept this: I think we have a right, nay...an obligation... to kick and scream as we are pulled into this abyss. Think: how mad everyone is at the NSA all the time.

[glatt]

I believe it's all legal. What she did, taping him, was legal. What he said was legal. What the NBA has done is legal.

I also think all three parties are self serving money grabbers, and he's mostly a pathetic confused old racist man who is being destroyed.

I think it's fine to mock him in the court of public opinion. That's also free speech. But these more formal penalties are just knee jerk fear by the NBA.

[infinite monkey]

I disagree that what she did was legal. Of course, I'm working off my assumption that the idea she was supposed to record every single conversation was exaggeration, if not invention, on her lawyers' part.


But the commissioner says "now the healing process begins." I truly feel for anyone who is offended, for anyone who has been the victim of racism, but I fail to see why this old codger's dumbass statements are something that society needs to heal from. But now I know that, according to Barkley, that the NBA is a black league. He then repeated that statement "We are a black league." I wonder at the hell that would have broken out had a Larry Bird or the like said anything remotely like that. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go heal.

[footfootfoot]

If they banned Pete Rose for life then that's the least they should do for this guy.

I really don't think it's such a bad thing to try to hold onto some shred of sportsmanship like expectations of players and owners alike even if it is at worst a pretense or at best a spit into the wind.

I've got something that needs healing, all right...

[infinite monkey]

That's it! I've had it! You, sir, are banned from Cincinnati!

[infinite monkey]

Now where's my Pete Rose Pete Rose Pete Rose baseball?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

banned from Cincinnati!

Band from Cincinnati? Who, the Isley Brothers?

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by glatt

Band from Cincinnati? Who, the Isley Brothers?

I think you're down and confused, and you can't remember who you're talkin' to...

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by glatt

... We have this thing in our country called the Constitution. And the 1st Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech....

"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."

CONGRESS shall make no law, the NBA can make "laws".

This was a business decision. Across the league (playoff teams) Players were about to refuse to play. The smart thing for the league was to get rid of him.

[footfootfoot]

All that's left is a Banned of Gold.


And another thing about free speech, hate speech should not be protected speech. I guess this is a grey area, I assumed it fell under fighting words, but ti just misses.

eta:

Some limits on expression were contemplated by the framers and have been read into the Constitution by the Supreme Court. In 1942, Justice Frank Murphy summarized the case law: "There are certain well-defined and limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise a Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous and the insulting or “fighting” words – those which by their very utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."[69]

Traditionally, however, if the speech did not fall within one of the above categorical exceptions, it was protected speech. In 1969, the Supreme Court protected a Ku Klux Klan member’s racist and hate-filled speech and created the ‘imminent danger’ test to permit hate speech. The court ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio that; "The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force, or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."[70]

This test has been modified very little from its inception in 1969 and the formulation is still good law in the United States. Only speech that poses an imminent danger of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of his or her speech, may be restricted and punished by that law.

In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, (1992), the issue of freedom to express hatred arose again when a gang of white racists burned a cross in the front yard of a black family. The local ordinance in St. Paul, Minnesota, criminalized such racist and hate-filled expressions and the teenager was charged thereunder. Antonin Scalia, writing for SCOTUS, held that the prohibition against hate speech was unconstitutional as it contravened the First Amendment. The Supreme Court struck down the ordinance. Scalia explicated the fighting words exception as follows: “The reason why fighting words are categorically excluded from the protection of the First Amendment is not that their content communicates any particular idea, but that their content embodies a particularly intolerable (and socially unnecessary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey”.[71] Because the hate speech ordinance was not concerned with the mode of expression, but with the content of expression, it was a violation of the freedom of speech. Thus, the Supreme Court embraced the idea that hate speech is permissible unless it will lead to imminent hate violence.[72]

[Clodfobble]

There's cultural implications beyond basic racism in this situation, as well. It would have been different if he were, for example, the CEO of a company that manufactures basketballs and sells them to the players. But he is not in a business relationship with these players, he is the owner of the team, with all the possessive baggage that implies.

Plus, the woman who recorded him, his sometime-girlfriend, is mixed race herself. He doesn't like black people, he just likes screwing them. Part of the transcript had him telling her that she was welcome to bring her friend Magic Johnson to the house, "entertain him, feed him, fuck him--just don't bring him to the games." Another layer of cultural baggage, that slaves were so often used for sex.

It's like when a homophobe is outed as being gay--the outrage is greater because it's not just about the discrimination, it's about the hypocrisy. Americans will respect a racist's right to free speech, but not a hypocritical racist.

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

There's cultural implications beyond basic racism in this situation, as well. It would have been different if he were, for example, the CEO of a company that manufactures basketballs and sells them to the players. But he is not in a business relationship with these players, he is the owner of the team, with all the possessive baggage that implies.

Plus, the woman who recorded him, his sometime-girlfriend, is mixed race herself. He doesn't like black people, he just likes screwing them. Part of the transcript had him telling her that she was welcome to bring her friend Magic Johnson to the house, "entertain him, feed him, fuck him--just don't bring him to the games." Another layer of cultural baggage, that slaves were so often used for sex.

It's like when a homophobe is outed as being gay--the outrage is greater because it's not just about the discrimination, it's about the hypocrisy. Americans will respect a racist's right to free speech, but not a hypocritical racist.

And she doesn't like to fuck old racist curmudgeons, she just likes their money?

[footfootfoot]

Or it could come under defamation or slander and in that case wouldn't be protected unless it was spoken in private, then he can say whatever he wants.

[footfootfoot]

Coming to theaters near you.
This July.

"I WAS A TEENAGE RACIST OLD CURMUDGEON"