Using A Fool’s Folly To Gain Political Advantage

The Democrat party is desperately looking for an issue that will bring Democrats out to vote in this year’s mid-term election. They have a few issues that have worked in the past, but they are having a hard time finding one that will work this year. Well, I think they think they have found their issue–it’s the ongoing problem of racism in America. We had our conservative racist last week–Cliven Bundy was taken to the cleaners by the press. Now we have our Democrat racist this week–Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

Mr. Sterling was taped by a former girlfriend during an argument. Those tapes were then released to the press as evidence that Mr. Sterling was a racist. At this point I should mention that Mr. Sterling is 80 years old, extremely wealthy and his girlfriend is young, black, and Mexican. He seems more like an older man in the clutches of a gold-digger than a racist.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article on the controversy yesterday.

The article reports:

The more you learn about the story, the stranger it gets. If you listen to the tapes, which have been made public by TMZ and Deadspin, it is hard to make sense of them. Sterling doesn’t want Stiviano to put up photos of herself with African-Americans on Instagram or bring them with her to Los Angeles Clippers games. He says he doesn’t care if she associates or sleeps with black people, just don’t put them up on Instagram. An odd distinction! His request was motivated, evidently, by the fact that one or more of Sterling’s friends called him to comment on the Instagram photos. While Sterling never says this, reading between the lines it appears that someone must have teased him about his mistress consorting with blacks.

As usual, President Obama chose to comment on how this incident shows that America is racist:

“The United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation, that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination,” Obama said during a news conference in Malaysia, where he was traveling.

No, the incident shows that a wealthy older man is vulnerable to a woman who wants a large portion of his money. Individual people may be racist in America, just as individual people all over the world may have prejudices. However, the comments of a man in a heated domestic argument should not be used to accuse America of being racist. There is also a strong possibility that Mr. Sterling’s girlfriend was baiting him to make sure she got a really good tape. I also wonder if she asked Mr. Sterling for money for the tape before releasing it and if he refused. That may be the reason the tape was released–blackmail didn’t work.

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