Posted on 04/29/2014 6:30:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
A private recording of racist remarks by the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, in a telephone conversation was released last week. Among other comments, Sterling said to his former mistress, a black Mexican woman known as V. Stiviano:
"It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to? ... You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that ... and not to bring them to my games. I'm just saying, in your lousy f---ing Instagrams, you don't have to have yourself with, walking with black people. ... Don't put him [Magic] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don't bring him to my games."
That these comments are racist and therefore contemptible goes without saying. But the incident raises other issues that are not as clear as the racism in Sterling's comments, yet they are at least as important.
One is the increasing release -- and acceptability -- of private recordings and videos. Take the video released last month of a married congressman engaged in a passionate kiss with a married member of his staff. This was a security surveillance video. Isn't the only reason for the very existence of surveillance cameras to catch criminals? Why didn't the release of such a video shock the media and the country?
I have consistently defended these ubiquitous video cameras against those who argue that they violate our privacy. I am convinced that they are indispensable to apprehending violent criminals, as they were in the case of the Boston Marathon terrorists. But, I have repeatedly added, if these cameras are ever used for personal or political reasons to ruin people's lives or careers, the perpetrators of the release must be punished severely, including prison terms. And if this abuse becomes widespread, the cameras must be taken down.
The fact that whoever released the surveillance video of the congressman has not been apprehended is a threat to us all. Yet this aspect of the incident has not even been discussed. All we heard was gloating over catching a conservative congressman in an act of infidelity.
Similarly, recordings of private speech must also remain private unless they pose a danger to others. When the media report private conversations that pose no threat of violence, they encourage more and more people to record and release private conversations. That, far more than the NSA trolling of billions of phone calls in order to identify terrorists, poses a real threat to privacy. Where are the civil liberties groups and libertarians on this issue?
Now, the second issue: How important to the public are the private remarks of public individuals? On July 18, 2000, I wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled: "Hillary Isn't an Anti-Semite."
It was a response to a book titled "State of a Union" by Jerry Oppenheimer, in which the author claimed that Clinton had called the Jewish manager of husband Bill's failed 1974 Congressional campaign, a "Jew bastard."
"I wish to defend Hillary Clinton," I wrote, "against the charge of anti-Semitism. I do so as a practicing Jew and a Republican. ... We must cease this moral idiocy of judging and labeling people by stray private comments. As David McCullough's biography of Harry Truman revealed, one of the most courageous friends American Jews and blacks ever had in the White House frequently used 'kike' and 'nigger' in private. He even wrote them down: In a letter home from New York, Mr. Truman described the city as 'kiketown.' Was this unfortunate? Yes. Important? No. Defining of the man? Absolutely not.
"I am repulsed by the loose talk about Mrs. Clinton's long-ago utterance. If that renders her an anti-Semite, then virtually every Gentile is anti-Semitic and almost every Jew is an anti-Gentile bigot.
"It is highly misleading to probe private comments for evidence of anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry and sexism. The present trend emanates largely from a lethal combination -- the totalitarian temptation inherent in contemporary liberalism and the media's sensationalism."
It may well matter to God what people say in private. But what should matter to us is what people say in public and how people act -- whether in private or public.
Now, as it happens, Sterling does seem to have behaved in a racist manner in the past. And these actions do matter in assessing Donald Sterling. It is worth noting, however, that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People apparently felt that all the previous charges of racist conduct meant nothing. It was scheduled to award Sterling a lifetime achievement award at its upcoming Los Angeles gala in two weeks.
Yes, the private remarks attributed to Sterling are racist and awful. But the growing acceptance of leaks of people's private non-criminal behaviors and comments -- and the consequent judgment of these people -- will ultimately injure society far more than who owns the Los Angeles Clippers.
Those who think Sterling is just going to roll over for them are in for a rude surprise. The dude’s 80 YO, is worth billions, and the ego to go with all that cash.
Does anyone else wonder if it isn’t just a coincidence that this disturbing racial diatribe gets released just as Obama, Holder and the Democrat establishment is doing everything in their power to stir up racial unrest, most likely to motivate black voters for the midterms?
Holder is commissioning one study after the other on “disparate impact” and openly accusing congress of racism - this fits right in to that narrative.
It sure didn’t take Obama long to weigh in on Sterling’s comments.
“Why isn’t she being prosecuted for this recording? In California both parties must agree to recording before it can be legally done.”
She and TMZ both claim that he knew he was being recorded, and when you hear the full recording, it’s clear he knew. I don’t know if that’s true or if we’ll ever hear evidence, but that’s what is being ‘reported’.
Sorry, I disagree. Truman was a decent person. Not perfect.
Just like you.
Yep, its seems a bit extreme.....
to crucify this clown for what he believed was a private conversation......
and what she did in recording him is outright illegal to do here in Maryland......
But considering that his behavior was so seedy, associating with someone like her in the first place, and buying her expensive gifts and $$$,(while being married) and the planned NAACP Lifetime Achievement award ( this part is really funny, really!!), its impossible to sympathize with him at all.
I hope he puts up a fight and goes out swinging....for entertainment..keep MSNBC busy....I never watched basket-ball anyway.
Liberals claim they are all about tolerance, acceptance, diversity. Yet here we have a guy that doesn't follow the liberal PC agenda. Look how "tolerant" and "accepting" liberals are. How much are they "celebrating his diversity" from them? Yeah, not so much. In fact they are working overtime to vilify and destroy him. {expletive} hypocrites.
The single greatest threat to true freedom and liberty is the so-called liberal.
Geeze, it’s getting more and more like the old Soviet Union.
“In Obama’s America - television watches YOU!”
Well, I guess this old f*rt isn’t convinced that’s racist. I mean, substitute ‘homosexuals’ where the word blacks is found and it is clear the man doesn’t want to be used to promote a social engineering agenda. That the New Yuck Slimes twist that into racism is just more proof the media whoredom are being obedient and pimping yet another faux crisis in order to keep anyone from seeing the evil in our midst destroying America behind a curtain of media promoted deception.
Nothing, since about 2000.
There is no 'private'.
add “...for only so long.” to the end of the last sentence.
The act itself is criminal in California.
Or recording. All of this smacks of a police state and I fear we are headed in that direction. Surreptitiously recording a person's private conversations is an assault on individual liberty and free speech.
I lived two years in a communist country. What is happening here is very similar to how the communists were able to control and intimidate free expression. Any anti-government remarks in private or in public were subject to retribution. Children were encourage to report on their parents.
NSA has shown that we have the technical means to invade the private domain of speech and written correspondence. How far will we go in this realm? And can we just dismiss any protection of our free right of expression if the targeted individual is privately a bigot or racist?
you would be welcome to them
If so, he was very foolish. Or arrogant to the point of foolishness.
I take it you are in favor of prosecuting James O'Keefe for his videos of government crooks and Lila Rose who videotapes the abortion facilities?
Should only the government be allowed to secretly tape your conversations?
Comments on most general matters of “interest” which I have uttered in private has been communicated in one way or another right here on Free Republic
I suspect that were I a “sort of” public figure”....[ and wealthy enough to be quoted that Barack Hussein Mohammed Obama would have called for my head on a spike many moons ago.
we truly seem to be entering the new dark ages
you should write a book on those parralels- show how what we are seeing now is the same as what you saw then
“The little I ask you is not to promote it on that”
What is “it? What is “that”? What was she “promoting”? Curious choice of words. Promoting something using “race”? Not approving of using race for a promotion wouldn’t necessarily be racist.
This sentence is “context” to his so-called racist remarks.
Without understanding what he meant by this statement, I can’t determine how racist, if at all, his comments were. Why can everyone one else do so?
I sense he was TRYING to be FUNNY but I could be mistaken
I would be soooo SCREWED if everything I said in private was made public.
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