For instance, when Al Sharpton described whites as cave-dwellers in a speech, he did not offend me because I won't allow it. Or, when Sterling made reference to Jews, he offended them only if they respect him enough to allow it. When Bundy spoke of slavery, he offended blacks only if they think he's important enough to allow themselves to be affected. A Clippers player is offended by Sterling only if he allows it.
When Obama was asked about Sterling's comments in a press conference, instead of merely indicating that he wouldn't dignify Sterling with an answer he decided to get on Sterling's name-calling level and called him ignorant. He rose to the bait of being offended because he allowed himself to be.
This is the crux of the matter regarding the current effort in this country to effect mind-control and abridge freedom of speech. Government and private individuals and institutions have said that people may not hate and that they may not say what they like. This is the same as bureaucracies mandating the amount of salt on a hamburger or restricting outside smoking areas when one eighteen-wheeler or freight-train passing through the city pours more carcinogens in the air than 500,000 smokers.
Cultural attributes cannot be nullified by laws. Regardless of their denials, all people have prejudices and millions are racist, including people of all races. These attributes cannot be changed across-the-board by any other force, including churches, schools and non-profit welfare agencies. They are inborn or learned and are simply to be dealt with individually. Result: order, not anarchy in this country. Look elsewhere in the world and see the opposite.
The reaction fueled by the media is one of wholesale condemnation of Sterling by a nation now so allegedly pure that it won't countenance the remarks he made about Jews and blacks. Baloney! The vast majority couldn't care less about something in which they have no interest – the NBA or race. Fox's Jewish commentator Bernie Goldberg was outraged but expressed the gravity of the situation by ridiculing sister cable network CNN because it stopped its Flight 370 (239 dead) coverage long enough to cover Sterling. What hypocrisy!
Fox's Jewish commentator Charles Krauthammer, with whom I agree on most things, gushed that his teenage son belongs to a clique that sees no differences in people. Baloney! Fox's Bill O'Reilly has castigated NBC and its personnel for years. Hypocritical self-righteousness! Neither man would want his private conversations (often Sterlingesque, I'll bet) about people broadcast. The point is that these people are blinded to the realities because they're blinded to their own foibles.
Neither Sterling nor the other objects of ridicule should be offended by Goldberg, Krauthammer or O'Reilly...unless they want to be. It's worth noting that Sterling is Jewish and that NBA Commissioner Silver, who just fined Sterling $2.5 million and ordered that he give up his ball club and go nowhere near his own team or the games, is also Jewish. Having been on the job only three months, Silver went way over the line. How much did the Jewishness of all these men, except O'Reilly, dictate their actions?
It's doubtful that Sterling has been offended by the remarks of these men or anyone else because he doesn't intend to be. There are groups in this country who have made a cottage industry out of convincing people that they should be offended or hurt somehow by things they hear, thereby victimized. Baloney. This is a way of telling people they are too infantile to handle TALK.
The Clippers players are paid well for what they do and it's a cinch that the things they say privately about Sterling wouldn't stand the light of day. He is un-lovable, apparently unfaithful to his wife, crude and foul-mouthed. Nothing he said hurt anyone, however, and he had a right to say it, especially in private.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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