Why is this story getting so much media attention? Because it is compelling. It is great human drama and it exemplifies a way of thinking that half of society regards as evil — racism.
Steve Sailer points out how the New York Times wants to paint Donald Sterling as “Southern” rather than as “Jewish”:
… For decades it was perfectly acceptable to let him run his team like “a Southern plantationlike structure,” as the former Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor once charged in a lawsuit. …
That suit also accused Sterling of running his franchise with the mentality of a Southern plantation owner, as a man who preferred a team of “poor black boys from the South” who were “playing for a white coach.”
Baylor lost the lawsuit, but among the most shocking parts of it — just like the most shocking aspect of the most recent accusations against Sterling — was how long Baylor put up with “the Southern plantation” mentality before standing up for himself.
I suspect that half of society has sympathy for Donald Sterling’s remarks, whether or not they are conscious of it. Very few whites and asians, despite their protestations to the contrary, will live near many blacks and latinos and they do not want their kids to go to school with many black and latino kids and they do not want to socialize with many blacks and latinos and they do not want to work around many blacks and latinos. That’s the way whites and asians around the world choose to live their lives and the tiny number of whites and asians who operate differently in this regard are statistically insignificant.
Race is an open sore in America because we have so many races here. Whenever there are multiple races in one area, there is conflict and tragedy. The races don’t get along. They never have. When multiple races are in one area, they compete until one race comes out on top and sets the rules for the rest who lump it or leave.
This Donald Sterling story is delicious because we get to talk about things that are of visceral interest to most people but are not acceptable to talk about in public such as not wanting blacks around in your real life because they commit so many crimes.
This conflict is so Jewish. I’ve met many Jews who are just like these characters Donald Sterling and Siamak Ebrahim Nehoray. Many Jews I’ve known worry much less about public propriety than do the WASPs I’ve known. When you look at those who get arrested for adventurous tactics on Wall Street, it is rarely WASPs. About half the time, in my memory, it is Jews and the rest are often Indians and other minorities.
Sterling made much of his money as a trial lawyer, another Jewish occupational specialty. He apparently gives away vast sums. Jews are generous people. And he wants to be noticed for his charity, another Jewish trait. (Yes, most people want to be noticed for their good deeds, but Jews tend to have less shame in pursuing this than non-Jews, particularly WASPs.)
Most Jews are nothing like Donald Sterling, but about 10% of the Jews I’ve met remind me of him in their shamelessness (while no WASP I’ve known has reminded me of Donald Sterling). Why are they shameless? Because they don’t care what the goyim thinks of them. Hostility to the majority culture has helped keep Jews intact as a unique group for thousands of years.
I don’t think Sterling is a horrible person. I think he’s crude and a self-made over-achiever who, at times, makes my skin crawl. His taped remarks splashed all over TMZ, however, don’t make me think any worse of him, just as I don’t necessarily think badly of anyone who says extreme things in private while in great emotional distress.
I don’t think Jews are better or worse than other people. I think Jews are different. In some ways, they are different good and in other ways they are different bad.
Donald Sterling discriminated in housing? So what. Almost all whites and asians discriminate in housing in that they won’t live around many blacks and latinos. All Jewish communities in the non-Jewish world are built with deliberate housing discrimination wherein Jews won’t sell to non-Jews in a particular neighborhood so that it can stay dominantly Jewish.
The more religious you get in Jewish life, the more negative the view of blacks (in general, individual exceptions). The more traditional you get in any way of non-black life, the more negative the views of blacks.
Steve Sailer writes:
One overlooked aspect of the remarkably tawdry Clippers Brouhaha is its personal injury/divorce lawyer flavor. That’s how Donald Sterling got his start, and he maintains the bulletproof ego of a sleazeball lawyer who knows it pays to advertise, no matter how badly. When he first bought the Clippers, he put up hundreds of billboards featuring a giant portrait — not of his best player, but of himself. He constantly runs poorly Photoshopped ads in the Los Angeles Times of himself accepting awards from civil rights organizations and other charities.
Via Kevin Drum, here’s Sterling’s latest of countless self-congratulatory LA Times ad.
Sterling’s mistress’s lawyer isn’t exactly Charles Evan Hughes, either.
Siamak Ebrahim Nehoray is a graduate of Memphis State (maybe he met some ballers there?) and the University of Laverne College of Law. He was suspended in 2004 by the state bar association for playing fast and loose with a small amount of a client’s funds.
Most Jews are not sleazy like these guys but there’s a shamelessness to their behavior that few WASPs could pull off.
If you give your typical Protestant a compliment, they will try to shrug it off. Oh no, not me, I’m a big sinner. Give a Jew a compliment, and he’ll ask for another one. Jews tend to feel great about themselves while Protestants believe they’re full of sin. I haven’t met many Jews who feel they are full of sin.
Jews tend to have more sex partners than do non-Jews (see the 1994 University of Chicago sex survey, the most comprehensive ever) and speak more matter of factly about the great human passions such as sex, money and the desire for honor and power.
Listen to the way Sterling talks about a hooker during a deposition. This is the type of frankness I’ve encountered among a significant number of Jews (a minority of all Jews, but still a large enough number to make an impression on me).
In my experience, Jewish life is 100x more likely to honor such sleazy characters as Donald Sterling than people who expose them through journalism, because journalists are poor and sleazy characters are often rich.
Talkshow host Larry King has been married eight time, often to non-Jews, and was honored by an Aish HaTorah banquet (while Aish HaTorah kicked me out in 1998 for blogging about the sleazy Jews of the porn industry). The lay leader of Aish HaTorah, Richard Horowitz, signed a few weeks ago an embarrassing consent decree with the SEC for wrongdoing. He still leads Aish HaTorah and his son Michael leads Adas Torah (despite an ongoing SEC investigation). You won’t lose most communal honor in Jewish life if you do white collar crime just so long as you donate lots of money to Jewish causes.
You can be a rabbi who’s been arrested for soliciting prostitutes and still lead an Orthodox synagogue for decades in Pico-Robertson.
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager tells a self-described Torah-observant black non-Jew about Donald Sterling: “He’s a Jew, but he isn’t Jewish. He was born into a Jewish family. It’s not like he leads a Jewish life, not even talking morally, religiously, ethnically, anything. If he observes Torah, I will broadcast from your house for the next year and I will write a Torah with you.”
As first reported in these pages, Sterling initially denied under oath having an affair with Castro, but subsequently admitted to paying her for “sucking me all night long.” Sterling described Castro as a “total freak” and “piece of trash” whom he paid $500 per “trick.” Describing his relationship with Castro, Sterling testified, “It was purely sex for money, money for sex, sex for money, money for sex,” adding that the couple would have sex “all over my building, in my bathroom, upstairs, in the corner, in the elevator.”
A review of Sterling’s testimony offers further details of how, according to the wealthy businessman, he was victimized by a predatory, sex-crazed younger woman. Deposition highlights included:
* Sterling testified, “All this woman did was call me every other day and asked me if she could suck me, if she could come in and give me a trick or if she could lick me.”
* When asked about a trip he took to Paris and Rome with Castro, Sterling replied, “For sex. I travelled with her for sex.” Though he could not always perform due to “all of these nine pills a day,” Sterling noted, “But whenever we traveled anywhere on the trip, she kept a record. And she told me how much I owed her, and I paid her. I paid her for every time we ever fooled around.”
* Recalling that, “We went to Paris to have sex,” Sterling testified that Castro wanted to tryst in an airplane bathroom, but “I wasn’t physically able to.” Sterling and Castro were joined on that European trip by Castro’s mother, who flew to Italy on the businessman’s dime. After spending time with his mistress and her mom, Sterling testified that he met up with his wife for the remainder of his overseas vacation.
* Sterling, then nearly 70, was apparently irresistible to Castro: “Every time that girl saw me she grabbed my body. She wanted to pull something and have sex.”
* Testifying about having sex at Castro’s Los Angeles apartment, Sterling recalled, “The minute I walk in, she has got a dirty video on the TV, the filthiest, dirtiest, ugliest video. That is supposed to get me hot.” Sterling added that Castro told him the video was a gift from boxer Mike Tyson, whom she previously dated.
* As to whether he had asked Castro to speak with a doctor “about whether she could become pregnant,” Sterling bristled. “Here a man is having a relationship, sex for money with a woman. He is quietly concealing it from the world…It is ridiculous. It is ludicrous.”* On the transactional nature of his dealings with Castro, Sterling said, “I paid her $500 a trick. Every time she provided sex she got $500.”
* Castro was insatiable, Sterling claimed. “The woman wanted sex everywhere. She wanted it in the alley, in her car, in the elevator, in the upstairs seventh floor, in the bathroom.”
* Sterling–an exacting customer–made it clear that cash he gave Castro was not a “gift.” He testified, “I was paying her. It was in exchange for sex. It wasn’t a gift. I wasn’t giving her money without her performing something for me. And if it wasn’t good, I wouldn’t give her anything. It was money for sex. How can you say it was a gift? If a man has an affair with a prostitute, is that a gift? It is not a gift.” (9 pages)
Steve Sailer writes:
It sounds like there’s a much more interesting story going on with the Donald T. Sterling donnybrook than anybody has been investigating yet. I don’t know how far this story might go, but it just might go all the way from Magic Johnson to somebody really interesting.
For years, I’ve been pointing out that much of the hoopla over racism and sexism isn’t actually about blacks or women or whatever. Instead, it serves as a cover story for ambitious, clever men to get what they want. For example, I’ve long been fascinated by how mortgage lenders like Angelo Mozilo, Roland Arnall, and Kerry Killinger used the rhetoric of the War on Racist Redlining to blow up the housing bubble.
Obsess over racism; pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
But in the Sterling Story, who is The Man?
I’ll offer a theory about why the man might be Magic Johnson, who desperately wants Donald Sterling’s NBA franchise now that the Buss family says they won’t sell his old Lakers. But Magic was the front man in the purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers two years ago. So it might be Magic’s big money backers in Guggenheim Partners.
Donald Sterling is like a combination of all of the Jewish characters on the TV show Ray Donovan.
I’m reading this Los Angeles Times profile of Sterling and he reminds me of some Jews I know:
* Very talkative and open about the natural passions such as sex that most non-Jews keep quiet about publicly.
* Not afraid to tell you about what he does for his people and how others don’t do for their people.
* “Sterling’s business savvy, intermittent charm and charitable contributions had insulated him from the consequences of his eccentric behavior.”
* “Sterling had worked hard to create his own reality, spending millions on newspaper ads promoting his real estate empire, his charity work and himself — even as his Clippers were perennial losers and he was accused in lawsuits of discriminating against minority tenants whose rent payments helped make him rich.” King Solomon was also a huge philanthropist and self-promoter. It’s a Jewish thing.
* Jews are rarely afraid to tell you about how great they are. WASPs, by contrast, are more reticent while Catholics fall in between. “In his penthouse office in Beverly Hills, Sterling often showed visitors a Louis XIV desk, paintings by Rembrandt and Renoir and centuries-old Chinese antiques. He eagerly dropped celebrity names, bragging that he bought properties from Elizabeth Taylor and John Wayne, and once boasted of plans to buy an NFL franchise.”
* Jews tend to be more physically demonstrative than non-Jews and to need less body space. They often don’t worry about such goyisha concerns as manners. “Some associates cringed at Sterling’s habit of invading their space.”
* Jews have a different relationship to blacks. “Sterling’s recent troubles began in April when his remarks about blacks became public.” On the one hand, they’ll be more likely to vote similarly to blacks and on the other hand, they’ll likely demonstrate more fear about the presence of blacks when walking down the street and they’ll move away more quickly if blacks take up residence in their community.
* Jews tend to be more open with their emotions than non-Jews and secular Jews in particular frequently demonstrate little shame about things that would appall the goyim. “Sterling never hid his infatuation with Stiviano, the personal assistant and caretaker he described as his lover. He stared at her. When they didn’t sit together, he waved. To some in the Clippers organization, the relationship created deep concern.”
* Jews are more verbally violent than non-Jews but less physically violent. “On a conference call in early June, Sterling threatened to “take out” his wife’s lawyer, Pierce O’Donnell. Hours later, Sterling left profane, threatening messages for the doctors who deemed him unfit.”
