Readers React: The Donald Sterling case
Re “Banned for life,” April 30
To any regular reader of The Times, none of the Donald Sterling mess should come as a surprise.
After seeing hundreds of his kitschy self-aggrandizing ads for his charity work, it should be clear that Sterling does not need money; he needs attention.
This entire fiasco has given him something worth far more than his $1.9-billion fortune. It has made him a household name, something his money could not buy.
He will not give up easily. He will milk the attention and publicity to the detriment of the Clippers and the city.
One day, he can have this engraved on his tombstone: “Everybody knows who I am!”
Doug Jones
Los Angeles
No one seems bothered by the fact that a private conversation has become the basis for the NBA banning Sterling for life and fining him $2.5 million even though, as far as I can tell, he didn’t actually do anything.
Sterling didn’t pay his players differently, didn’t segregate them on transportation and didn’t promote or fire on the basis of race or ethnicity.
We now live in a society in which private conversations are made public, aided and abetted by technology, the news media and the smug satisfaction that it is all OK as long as the opinions expressed are likely to be viewed as odious.
Why worry about the National Security Agency when countless agents are willing to work for free?
Elliott Oring
Long Beach
As an African American, I am appalled by Sterling’s remarks, the discrimination charges leveled against him in the past and in his business practices. I am equally upset at the L.A. chapter of the NAACP for honoring him in the past and preparing to honor him again with a lifetime achievement award.
How much of a financial contribution is required to receive one of these awards? As a result of this situation, how seriously can we take these institutions, which claim to be committed to the advancement of our race, or any organization whose mission is stated to be equality for all?
Shame on the L.A. NAACP for marketing our race to the highest bidder.
Christopher Clendenin
New York
Though I wholeheartedly agree that Sterling’s remarks are abhorrent, this knee-jerk reaction and bitter reprimand set a dangerous precedent for us all.
I am not defending Sterling’s words, but they are his words and his alone. They do not reflect a company policy, nor do they ask that we adhere to their ideals.
Where do we draw the line? How is it our right to tell someone that his comments made in private are cause for a fine of more than $2 million? How do we justify our demands that he forfeit a lucrative business simply because some of us have been gravely insulted?
This is a very slippery slope we have embarked on. When someone is denied the right to express a thought unacceptable in polite society, then we are all denied the right to think for ourselves, regardless of the unpopular nature of those thoughts.
Are we now entering the realm of “thought police”?
Tom DeSimone
Palm Springs
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