Like most folks, the Sterling Affair with the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team left me feeling uneasy. This new embarrassment does provide an opportunity to consider a number of vexsome issues.
First, I am committed to free expression. A number of comments continue to make an elementary error. The First Amendment applies to governmental strictures (through the Fourteenth Amendment). As far as the government is concerned we can “say anything we want” but that does not apply in the private sphere. Under the First Amendment, only imminently dangerous speech connected to an act can be punished. Such limitations do not apply to private groups. I am concerned that speech seems to be more readily punished than, say discriminatory acts. To what degree should we be able to contract away free expression rights in our country at all? Do we need to think through talking about free expression when it can be punished to the degree it is by the NBA in this instance? Maybe this tawdry mess can get us started in a national conversation about the degree to which speech should be punished in private settings.Is a huge fineand a ban an appropriate remedy for his language as levied by a private agency, the NBA?
Second, I have some real privacy concerns. If pushed, I suppose that i would make a distinction between public speech and private speech. I do not understand how we can use surreptitious phone tapes, transfer them to a third party, then have them broadcast, and be punished for private speech.We do not know who released the tape and for what purpose, other than a hefty reward from TMZ. . Do we have no expectation of privacy in this new age of technology? Does punishment for released private conversation start to move us in the direction of thought police, not by the government but by private entities? When should public outcry be used as a decision to punish someone in their business affairs? what recourse does Mr. Sterling have for violation of his privacy when such a boatload of punishment hits him? Commissioner silver merely dismissed such concerns since they were publicized, that make shtat a public matter. I am not sure it is so easy. Certainly no governmental agency could respond so flippantly.
Third, it seems that we leapt to the conclusion that the tape was legitimate. Even if it was his voice on the tape, could it not have been manufactured from scraps of previous conversations and then smoothed into a narrative as choppy as an ordinary conversation? Again that conclusion was reached due to a sorry history of discriminatory acts and and speech.
Fourth, where was I when someone openly has mistresses in this country while still being married? I realize that in other countries men have dual families, but the point seemed to me to keep one;s affairs private.I have heard some people say that it permitted the wealthy, but not other classes.
Race continues to percolate through our national life in so many ways. Most would agree with Commissioner Silver that racism continues to be a moral stain within the human heart and as a country. Racial code words are the stock in trade of what passes for political discourse in our country. It is not at all clear to me How is racist speech more deserving of punishment than racist acts? Mr. Sterling seemed to have a primary concern of his mistress, herself of mixed race, publically being in the presence of non-whites. When we wish to hid, shame is at its core. Equality is an aspiration for many of us, but a solid core of racism exists both structurally and in the recesses of the dark corners of our own hearts and minds. Is racist opinion to be countered by other opinion, or shall we let it fester in the shadows, as we seek to forbid it in speech, public or private?
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