Discussion for article #222116
I love you Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but please take your narrow ass to the Staples Center, and have every last seat available. Sit on somebodyās lap if you have to, but have a seat.
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Hmm why now? I think we can all thank Cliven Bundy for the why now. And as to his past history.Public records are not all that public, sometimes it takes something rather obvious, like a audio tape for folks to wake up.
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The excerpts here at TPM donāt capture the context of his opinion piece at the LA Times, IMHO. He concludes, āLetās use this tawdry incident to remind ourselves of the old saying: āEternal vigilance is the price of freedom.ā Instead of being content to punish Sterling and go back to sleep, we need to be inspired to vigilantly seek out, expose, and eliminate racism at its first signs.ā
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A lot of donations to prominent nonrprofits can keep people from scraping too hard as well. I would have liked K A-J to have named those who spread some frosting on the excrement to throw the media off the scent.
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This very true. (argh the 20 character limit is really annoying)
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Taping by private parties may be unseemly but it is of a different order from what the NSA is doing. I share his distress about how hard it is to provoke outrage at outrageous conduct, but sometimes an audiotape is what it takes ā precisely because itās impossible to deny or blame others.
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Why now? - well because the public has all of the focusing capability of a chipmunk - and many of the previous instances of gross ugliness were boring and took time to understand - but this - this was like āHousewives of the Staples Centerā and if you think it was lapped up like ice cream as an audio tape - just imagine if there was a video complete with well timed eye-rolls and pouty faces - Kareem is correct - Sterling did not just convert to orthodox jerkism - he has been a faith practitioner for years.
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Got to give him credit for calling out the whole private conversation thing. OTOH, without the tape, the public would still be largely unaware of Sterlingās racist attitudes regardless of how many people knew about them in the past.
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That was a more interesting and intelligent response than most of the others Iāve seen. But I donāt agree with the idea that she cajoled him into making those comments. At worst, she just got him to spell out explicitly what was motivating his actions. But the demand to not bring black people to āhisā games is one he certainly seems to have come up with all on his own.
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Disappointed in the title of this article. Kareemās piece was much more nuanced than that click-bait headline would suggest.
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I, for one, have not yet received a satisfactory explanation for why weāre hearing Sterlingās conversation in the first place. Generally speaking, I donāt think anyoneās private conversations (especially those within an intimate relationship) should be the basis for public condemnation. Personal privacy is sacred for a reason.
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So, to Kareem, old news is by itās very age, no longer relevant. Yeah, this guy should have been called out earlier. But how does that get to be an excuse for not calling him out now?
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Oh, please, I DID read the whole blog post KAJ wrote. The portion where he talked about the girlfriend is subtly about as misogynistic as it gets. It drips with the attitude, āHow dare this little she-devil seduce this man into revealing himself?!ā
Bull hockey.
I read the transcript of the tape as well. And you know what it sounds like? It sounds like EVERY conversation I have ever heard where someone who is open minded on matters of race verbally confronts someone who is not. She didnāt have to trick him. All she had to do is have the courage to stand up to him.
It really isnāt any wonder that KAJās dream of a serious coaching career in the NBA has never gone anywhere.
One thing that bugs the crap out of me is why none of the sportswriters (including the women sportswriters) have thought to put together the other rather appalling pieces of the puzzle. Why not call out the ancient billionaire for having a wife and also parading a girlfriend who is far less than half his age out in public? What people do in private is their business (though that is no restriction on the decision of others to take their private business with you and make it public), but one would think that it would occur to the image conscious NBA that this is not the family-friendly image it would like to project.
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Yeah, I just canāt ignore the abject misogyny in suggesting Sterling was somehow tricked into saying these things because he found himself impervious to a hot young womanās feminine wiles. As black a woman, Iām as sick to fucking death of that as I am racism.
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When you say something to someone else, itās no longer completely privateāitās between you and the other person. And if the other person chooses to reveal what went on, you are out of luck. Thatās particularly true in a āone-partyā stateāone in which either party may record a call. Too bad for Sterling that California is, I gather, a one-party state.
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I think Kareem makes a lot of astute observations here (although the point of many of them seems rather negligible), however; I canāt quite get my feathers ruffled about his mistressā cajoling. (No one could ever ācajoleā me into saying the things Sterling did.) I sorta think the sunshine on his racism it is a net positive, despite the sneaky way in which it appears to have been done.
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So itās the mediaās fault, the girlfriendās fault and now the fault of everyone who did not know or were not vigilant about Sterling before all this.
Got it. Thanks Kareem.
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Private conversations arenāt sacred, especially when the private conversation reveals bad behavior, evil intent, or hateful beliefs. Just about every scandal revealed or heinous crime that gets solved usually involves a private conversation reported to authorities, the press, or made public.
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Jeez Louise! Who the hell wrote the head for this article? Did they even bother to read Jabbarās blog post?
Agree or disagree with the statementā¦ āAnd now the poor guyās girlfriend (undoubtedly ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his racism,ā Abdul-Jabbar wrote in a blog post for Time. "Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing āpin the fried chicken on the Sambo.ā " That sentiment isnāt anywhere near the main thrust and purpose of the post. So itās use is mere sensationalism. I expected better TPM!
Jabbarās point is simply the āoutrageā being expressed is more about show than substance. He points out that (1) Sterling has a much more substantive history of active discrimination against minorities, in areas where more than their dignity is injured, and (2) racism is, and has been, alive and kicking in our society and we ought not be surprised when it manifests itself.
While he also opines that the āgirlfriendā cajoled Sterling into making his comments, and the making and use of the tape is an invasion of privacy, those points are surely secondary to his condemnation of racism, full stop. He was not making excuses for Sterling (as the headline implies) but rather expressing his opinion about (and characterizing) the nature of the dialogue between the parties.
Lets not lose sight of the issue here folks. The issue is RACISM and discrimination writ large, not the legal wrangling between Mrs. and Mistress, as salaciously entertaining as that may be. Kareemās point, to which I strongly agree, is that we need to be vigilant about all racism (not just that splashed across the front page of some media forum or other. And we ought not be surprised that such sentiment still exists.
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