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Jewish World Review May 5, 2014 / 5 Iyar, 5774
Sterling case is about much more than racism
By Mitch Albom | ||
<div style="display:inline;"&JewishWorldReview.com | Now that Donald Sterling has been banned, fined and condemned — the proper, if ugly, conclusion, in my mind — we should discuss how it happened. Most of us don't need to worry about angry mistresses, Department of Justice investigations, discrimination lawsuits and a history of bigoted comments.
But all of us need to worry about privacy.
And no matter how incensed Sterling's comments made you, the way in which we discovered them must be addressed. His damning words — about his female friend associating with black people — were clearly a private conversation, one in which he may have been baited.
Yet 15 minutes of that conversation was released to the world. Rumors abound, but no one has confirmed why it was recorded or how it was distributed.
That didn't stop it from decimating an 80-year-old man and a 33-year-old business.
TMZ, the gossip website, refuses to say whether it traded money to air the tape (ironically, it sees that as private information), although an executive told the Washington Post it was "one of the biggest stories we've ever done."
One man's story is another man's ruin.
We should all care about this — regardless of race, ethnicity, economics or righteous cause. When LeBron James told the news media that it didn't matter whether Sterling "said that in the confinement of his family or said that by himself," he was motivated by an (understandable) dislike for the Los Angeles Clippers' owner.
But would he feel the same way if a tape of him making an ethnic joke in his living room suddenly blew up on the Internet and cost him millions in endorsements? How about a homophobic comment secretly recorded in the players' "inner sanctum" of the locker room? Does a locker room deserve more privacy than a home? Would James shrug and say, "You got me — whether I said it in the confinement of my family or said it by myself"?
Or would he rail against it?
WHEN YOU CAN AND CAN'T RECORD ...
How about all the pundits — myself included — who came down hard on Sterling for his bigoted views? What if we discovered that a private argument with our spouses in which we sounded cruel or sexist (and who hasn't at some point?) was suddenly being viewed worldwide, and readers were clamoring for our firing? Would we staunchly defend First Amendment rights or would we wonder whatever happened to private meaning private?
California has a law — as does Michigan — that says it is criminal to record a conversation unless all parties consent to the recording. It's a law. You can look it up. Yet the same news media that crash down on the slightest infraction by celebrities had no hesitation using something that might have been obtained illegally.
