jjsimp: Anyone else sick of hearing about the racist LA Clippers owner? I hate to say it but racism will never be a thing of the past, and harping on some comments a LA Clippers owner made to his girlfriend that he was pissed about is not news. People say all kinds of things that they don't mean when they are having arguments.
Get over it already, there is and always will be assholes in the world with lousy views of racism, sexism, etc.
I just finished reading an article on SI about the legal implications of this case. I am a fan of the NBA and quite interested in (us-american) social and cultural matters, so here is my answer to your post:
The case is a
bit more complicated than you may realize. The owner has quite the history of alleged racism: "According to the Justice Department, Sterling, his wife and three of his companies have engaged in discrimination, principally by refusing to rent to African-Americans" (
Source.)
There is much more dirt on him, read
, or start [url=http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/feature/index?page=sterling-investigation]here or on any sports news site who covers this, if you are interested (which you are not, I get it. But others might be. :) )
In short, he seems to be a terrible human being and an equally terrible owner of a franchise in a popular sport, located in the second most important media market in the USA. He employs African-Americans, he makes money off of African-Americans, his girlfriend who leaked the tape is black and Mexican....so a bigot's bigot in my book.
So you have the "rich man"-angle, you have the "sports franchise-owner" angle, you have the "what happens to his ownership, the franchise and ultimately the whole league"-angle, you have the general "racism as a stain on society and sports/entertainment as a microcosm/ magnifying glass"-angle. So yes, this is, and should be news. You started a thread on this on a
gaming website, and people responded, so ofc it is news. And it should be.
Furthermore, your logic is flawed. You do not seem to dispute that this man is a racist ("there is and always will be assholes in the world with lousy views of racism"). So why do you try to rationalize or trivialize it with "People say all kinds of things that they don't mean when they are having arguments."? Of course they do, but definitely not in this case.
Simply saying "I don't care, stop bothering me, you will never get rid of [enter social issue/injustice here], stop blowing this out of proportion" is not just too easy, it is just plain wrong in my book. You need to bring these matters to the attention of people, so that they are informed and are able to speak out and act against injustices. Racism, xenophobia, homophobia etc. are still major issues in our oh so civilized and progressive western society, and they need to be addressed. And if it is via sports, so be it. Just look at the recent coming-outs of (team sports) athletes and what that did for the public debate (as far as I am able to tell from afar.) But sadly I am afraid you may have been offended by the coverage about gay athletes as well.
TL;DR: I care, so much that I spent way too much time and energy writing this, not being a native speaker and all. :p