(hey, anyone notice hockey becoming more popular?)
I have, actually. You see AAs wearing Blackhawks gear on the train now, and engaging in conversation about the games. That is new.
I was genuinely surprised.
Me too. I was expecting a big fine and then waiting a while and trying to quietly force him out a year from now.
Apparently Yglesias was correct in this case.
How come, on Vox, some links are highlighted yellow and others are just plain links?
I guess external vs. internal links. FASCINATING!
I overheard some middle aged dudebro's talking about Sterling yesterday. Apparently the reaction to his rant shows that "as a country, we've become way too sensitive". Also, "Mumble mumble, some non sequitur about Al Sharpton, mumble mumble."
Over the years I've found it truly astonishing how large Al Sharpton looms in the minds of folks like this. In the middle aged dudebro imagination, Al Sharpton basically runs the world, apparently.
I don't understand how he's banned for life but only may be forced to sell. If the owners don't vote to force him to sell, he can still own the team but can't go to the games?
That's it exactly - he still gets whatever revenue comes in from the team, but he doesn't get to make any decisions (or go to the games). How this would play out if he actually turned up for a game is unclear.
Doesn't Yellow mean it's a link to a card in a Vox cardstack?
He's also going to be forced to sell anyway, unless a court bars it, and even then he'll probably sell anyway for a better deal. The other owners hate him and aren't exactly sad to see him go.
10.last: And I think he was more tolerable as a clown when his team wasn't competitive. Downright useful even, "No matter what we can always finish ahead of the Clippers."
The Clippers don't suck anymore?
There's a bit of sweet schadenfreude from the fact that he got pushed out just as his team started to look decent for the first time in...how many years?
Whenever action is taken so promptly, one suspects that there must be worse things yet to be discovered or disclosed, which discovery or disclosure the Commissioner hopes (probably foolishly) to prevent.
hey, anyone notice hockey becoming more popular?
A lot more popular here in Columbus! The Blue Jackets were actually decent this year! And they gave Pittsburgh quite a scare!
But we lost! I turned on the TV last night just as the Blue Jackets scored their 2nd goal to make it 4-2. And then they scored again! It had been 4-0, and now it was 4-3! I had turned on the TV just in time to watch the greatest comeback in Columbus Blue Jackets history!
And then nothing happened. The game and season was over.
The most surprising revelation to me from this whole controversy is that I had no idea KJ was now the Mayor of Sacramento. He was a key figure on my 1989 championship fantasy league team.
he'll probably sell anyway
Sterling bought the Clippers for $12 million. the team's worth around $600 million now.
There's no way the Clippers are only worth $600 million.
KJ is also Michelle Rhee's husband.
I don't have any idea what a selling price would be, but that's Forbes' estimate.
I mean, yes that's what Forbes says, but the Kings sold for $525 million. The Clippers are actually good and play in LA. Also when the value of teams is going up %20+ per year the estimates are a bit of a moving target.
22 was actually pwned by 21, but somehow looks like a response.
18, 19: on sports radio yesterday (shut up, I was in the car for hours), they were tossing around $1B.
I suspect Forbes is looking at it as though they're strictly an investment, and not really incorporating how much it's something rich people want to spend money on.
16: A lot more popular here in Columbus!
Yep. And Pittsburgh goalie Marc-André Fleury deserves some credit for that after he left the crease and the puck hopped over his stick with 22 seconds left in game 4 to allow Columbus to tie it and eventually win the game and make it 2-2 rather than going back to P'burgh down 3-1. So I think he has done as much as any player to contribute to Columbus hockey fever.
2: Chicago is a little different in terms of its hockey market. It's generally a good fan base that's pretty tolerant of losing (see: Cubs fans). Rocky Wirtz has been working very hard to fix Bill's legacy of treating fans and players like shit, plus they're really good, winning Cups in 2010 and 2013. I'm not sure I'd generalize based on Chicago how popular hockey is.
Does the NBA have to schedule games against the Clippers next season? If they were still punishing Sterling, could they publish a games rotation that doesn't include the Clippers at all?
AB just came into my office and asked, "So what did this Sterling guy say?" She's 100% out of the loop on any non-Pgh sports and 80% out of the loop on things people talk about on the internet, so she hadn't heard anything until today's news (which of course didn't bother with background, because almost everybody else knew it by now). I gave her the quick and dirty (IYKWIMAITYD).
I like Jelani Cobb on how this illustrates words speaking louder than actions.
6: I think Al Sharpton is basically never a non sequitur on the right. There's this "casual carpool" thing here and I end up listening to everyone's talk radio and Al Sharpton in the wingnut imagination is extremely relevant to everything.
What exactly is it that is enshrined in wingnut memory as putting Al Sharpton beyond the pale? I wasn't around back when he was a bigger name.
Or, to save you a search: he was a black man who talked about the rights of black people while being fat and wearing a track suit.
I was just wondering the same thing. There was the Tawana Brawley thing (for anyone who doesn't remember it, African American teenager found apparently beaten up and left in a trash bag, she said it had been done by specific local law enforcement people, Sharpton supported her, she subsequently recanted, I don't think it ever became clear what had actually happened to her), but that was the late 80s and seemed perfectly reasonable even if ultimately in error. I don't know what he's done wrong since that.
By the way, I felt compelled to check the inflation calculator: $12.5M in 1981 is $32.5M today. So it changes the comically large multiplier, but it doesn't change the basic fact of a $550M+ payday.
36: I think he lost a lot of weight last time I saw him.
I'm not wild about the proposal in 30 since it means the Clippers players don't get to play or compete for a championship, and some of them were drafted by the Clippers and had no real choice about their owner. At least they'd still get paid I guess.
Banning him for life and forcing him to sell are both good steps, but they should have been done in the 2000's when all the housing discrimination stuff came out, and it's kind of silly that what ultimately got Sterling in trouble was this random phone conversation recorded by his mistress who was trying to protect herself from a lawsuit being brought by the guy's wife, rather than the far more pernicious stuff he's been doing for decades.
Sorry for the spelling, Tawana.
Basically, I stick with 36. Sharpton appeared to be, ca. 1988, the "race hustler" of rightwing fantasy: no real credentials*, personally crass, and engaged in fa;se(?) accusations of racial prejudice against Upright Police Officers.
In the rightwing lizard brain, Sharpton basically refutes King.
*I honestly have no idea what his credentials are/were other than the fact that obviously communities can pick their own leaders.
But think of how much the poor man will have to pay in capital gain tax! Actually, I'm guessing there's some loophole that will let him avoid it.
Mistresses. The cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
398: No doubt, but it's too late. Fatness is a character trait, not a physical fact.
Also if Sterling didn't like Stiviano taking pictures with Magic Johnson, you gotta wonder what he'd think of this picture of her with actual Don Juan. H/t Snoop Dogg.
I had thought Ogged's point was more popular among African Americans. From context. That's what 2 is responding to.
The popularity of hockey in general rises and falls, and every so often all the hockey fans run off a cliff.
34/37: Al Sharpton supports, or at least once supposrted, reparation payments for slavery. I honestly think that's most of it.
41: He was quite young at the time -- twenties? IIRC, he was a child-prodigy preacher; he'd been a minister when he was in his early teens. I don't know if he went to college, but he'd been a community leader for a long time considering his age.
Come on, people. Al Sharpton is an actual hustler who was once a laughingstock but managed to rehabilitate his reputation and rejoin polite society. That he's taken seriously by anyone is the marvel, not that rightwingers think he's a bogeyman.
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Now you can make your own 2048 apparently so yesterday I played Famous (?) Musicologist 2048 for a while and got as far as Joseph Kerman.
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I honestly have no idea why I'm still using my browser here in incognito mode half the time.
I can see why you decided to keep that one anonymous.
What does 'hustler' mean to you? I'm not saying he's always been right about everything, but he's an activist and a community leader -- calling him a hustler as if being aggressive on racial politics is automatically self-discrediting is really not defensible.
I can't figure out who it is you get when you smoosh two Kermans together.
Used Kernan's textbook in college. Variations on a Theme by Haydn; Liebestod.
46: Seeing African-American hockey fans in gear in Chicago is not the best indicator of hockey's popularity since I think six years ago, seeing anyone in Blackhawks stuff was pretty unusual, and now it's fairly common. The games are on TV now in the local market, and Chicago's a town where folks like to root for their team, especially when they're doing very well. I think to see whether the racial makeup of the fan base is changing, you'd need to look somewhere that had a steadily interested fan base and steady performance. I just think Chicago is a bad place to make that guess by looking around.
Just to be clear, if I heard someone refer to Sharpton as a "race hustler," I'd confidently file that person in the right-wing asshole bin. And I'd defend a bunch of stuff he's said on various issues. But, just between us, this is not a guy on the up and up.
47- my most famous relative literally wrote the book on it.
I'm a bit more concerned about the letter from the NV congressman to the local sheriff asking for a look into reports the bundy-fans have set up armed checkpoints.
I agreed that tactically avoiding a fight with these thugs was right wrt the dawgies, but this, if true, is so very very bad and yet I fear if anything is done to you know enforce the LAW an alarming proportion of my fellow citizens will freak the fuck out.
Maybe the trick here is to get local law enforcement to do the deed?
I don't think Mr. Sharpton's finances would be unusual among white evangelical preachers. Clergy are all about hiding their money in the church.
64 is exactly right, there is a bizarre proliferation of tax and employment laws and regs that create very strong incentives for congregations to vastly underpay clergy and then look the other way at massive astonishing fiddles. It's gross.
Supposedly the players were threatening to boycott all of tonights games if Silver didn't take strong enough action.
54, 60: Yeah, no, Sharpton really has rehabilitated himself (if he needed to) as a community and social justice activist through the National Action Network.
Recent NAN activism has focused on crucial national cases as the organization continues campaigns around voter engagement, national gun violence intervention, jobs, corporate responsibility, immigration reform, health care reform, and seeking justice in cases including Trayvon Martin, Ramarley Graham, and Kendrick Johnson, to name a few. NAN's efforts also include calling for reform in states that practice "Stand Your Ground laws."
Other recent NAN accomplishments include a march of over 40,000 people in New York City against stop-and-frisk policing and racial profiling; a historic march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights and immigration reform; NAN's 2013 national convention keynoted by the Attorney General of the United States, five Cabinet members and leading civil rights activists; a nationwide labor tour with leading labor organizations including AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) that led to the defeat of proposed bill SB5 (Senate Bill 5) which was an assault on worker's rights; a March for Jobs and Justice on Capitol Hill; a 25-city Jobs rally; an Agreement with the NAACP, the National Urban League, and Comcast and NBC Universal to expand current diversity initiatives intended to increase diversity in a wide range of areas including programming and employment.
Sorry to quote at length, but the point should be made. Mind, he still sounds shrill and sometimes hysterical on his MSNBC show, but wevs.
The best part of the Chris Rock GOOD HAIR movie was totally Al Sharpton, so there's that. It's a low bar, but it's not nothing.
You know, with respect to Sterling, I've been most interested in the question pointed to by djw at LGM: how do (some) defenders of Brendan Eich now explain their condemnation of Donald Sterling? How to explain calling for the latter's firing, as it were, when doing the same for the former was beyond the pale?
Andrew Sullivan does have a response.
Which strikes me as utterly, hopelessly, lame. I haven't read the original at Sullivan's site.
Man, Al Sharpton of the late 80s was really something. (He was 33 at the time of the Brawley allegations, and while it's true in a sense that it wasn't perfectly clear what had happened to her, there was lots of evidence that what had happened wasn't what she said happened.)
The thing about Sharpton, for me, is that most of the people who seem to want his less-savory aspects to follow him around forever are perfectly happy to shake up the Etch-a-Sketch any time a white man wants to start fresh.
Further to Cobb link in 32, this Jay Smooth video is a little choppy but still pretty good.
Also, am I the only one who finds it really, really hard to look at Sterling's girlfriend? Something about her just sets off a visceral pain reflex that makes me flinch and imagine a plastic surgery knife. I usually only have this reaction to extreme Hollywood examples, but it's really strong in her case too.
What 60 said. A shady dude who is sometimes on our side is still a shady dude and there's nothing wrong with being a bit wary of the guy.
68 gets it right.
72: You're not the only one. But you know Donald Trump is already on record explaining that she's the girlfriend from hell, set him up by recording that phone call, strung him along, encouraging him to say those awful things. It's almost like you can't have a hot girlfriend 50 years your junior any more.
Something about her
I had myself mostly convinced that she was a guy, but I've come around to thinking the universe doesn't love us that much.
To answer Cobb and Mr. Smooth, I don't think the issue here is that actions are ignored but words rile people up, but that words on tapet aren't subject to the "me or your lyin' eyes" defense that is so effective in making a fact "controversial." Was there even a little doubt that Mitt Romney was a complete asshole who thought everyone who had less money that he did was a lazy shithead? No, but out comes the 47% tape, and he's hosed. Being able to hear a private moment for yourself is just very powerful.
It's more about removing the sheen of semi-plausible deniability, which is what protects tons of basically evil and horrible people. Sure, Sterling was a discriminatory asshole in his crappy apartment buildings advertised in horrible newspaper ads (seriously, check it out, those newspaper ads were horrible, this site doesn't even convey the horror of the ads, maybe this does). But the feds settled his discrimination suit without any finding or admission of guilt and unfortunately the Elgin Baylor lawsuit was both weak and rejected by a jury. Hard to see the league booting him out on that basis alone, but the tape is irrefutable evidence.
59: The [hockey] games are on TV now in the local market
Let me mention again that NBC is absolutely doing a great job on broadcasting the NHL Playoffs. Hockey with good national TV? Who could imagine such a thing? I hope is a first step in generating broader interest.
More on the horribly designed Donald Sterling newspaper ads
Hockey with good national TV? Who could imagine such a thing? I hope is a first step in generating broader interest.
Hockey and swimming? You're racister than Donald Sterling.
Sharpton in his early career was also pretty racist against Asians and involved is some very sketchy incitation that led to violence. In the Brawnley case IIRC he continued pushing things even after it became pretty clear that what Brawnley was claiming was not plausible. Eighties and early nineties Sharpton was not all that appealing a character.
More Sterling newspaper ads. I don't want these crimes to be forgotten.
The white, conservative Sharpton would be indistinguishable from any number of blowhards.
Speaking of [b]eing able to hear a private moment for yourself is just very powerful, I was not so sure about John Oliver's new show, but the interview he had with former NSA head, Gen. Keith Alexander was great. The first part is actually a better interview than the mainstream had done with him, but you may want to skip to about 7:40 when the conversation turns to branding. "The only government agency that really listens."
Everything Halford is linking is news to me and painting a much clearer picture than anything I'd seen before.
83: Let me tell you one more thing about paleo-diet-loving Crossfit enthusiast Hollywood IP lawyers who went to Cornell
Let's not forget Sterling taking a girlfriend into the Clippers' locker room and saying "Look at these beautiful black bodies."
In a movie or book you would dismiss his character as overdrawn.
Or at least the two I clicked on. I'm not going to click that many links.
The "HELPING KIDS BREATH IN LA" ad in 85 is really the best one.
91 to me? If so, that certainly is something I remember, but it doesn't help connect the image of the man to any class of people I've seen before. Asshole real estate guy with poor taste who puts his name and/or picture on everything is cladistic parsimony.
DeAndre Jordan with the monster game, nice to see since he always seemed particularly affected by Sterling's BS.
This, this is a lede.
He says he owns no suits, but has ''access'' to a dozen or so. He says he owns no television set because the one he watches in his home was purchased by a company he runs. He says he has no checking accounts, no savings accounts, no credit cards, no debit cards, no mutual funds, no stocks, no bonds, no paintings, no antiques. The only thing he admits to owning is a $300 wristwatch and a 20-year-old wedding ring.
WRT the Al Sharpton tangent I set off with 6, I wasn't suggesting that anyone join his fan club, I was mainly remarking on what an absurdly outsized boogeyman he seems to be for the aggrieved conservative white guy set.
I try to avoid right wing talk shows, but if they mention him all the time, as several people noted above, that probably explains it.
Shadow President Sharpton. From link in 55.
This may be an idiosyncratic reaction, but having known in childhood "real" African-American ministers who had churches, congregations, chaplaincies, pastoral visit duties, etc., I've thought Al Sharpton seemed really, really phony.
But I feel guilty for thinking that, of course.
Given that the media has been blaring about how he's a phony, corrupt "race hustler" since the 80s, my intuition is that your reaction might not be purely internally driven and idiosyncratic. I mean, Hillary Clinton totally cackles like a witch, I wouldn't deny that.
I meant ecclesiastically phony. I hope I was never stupid enough to believe that "race hustler" is a category of things that exist.
OT: David Frum is a filthy Canadian and worse, but this article isn't un-thought-provoking here and there.
104: Ogged does seem to be an interesting "everyman" with respect to mainstream media narrative.
106 omits the point of "BECAUSE MONEY". (In fact, the idiot Frum goes as far as saying "Whatever else you say about the NRA, its cause does not obviously improve the standing of the richest members of society". Except for Messrs Smith and Wesson, of course.)
There is not, to my knowledge, a large industry which stands to lose a lot of money if gay marriage is permitted. There's no massive vested interest in the manufacture of signs for buses that say "Whites Only". Liberals have won on those.
But they have lost on fossil fuels, they've lost on disarmament, they've lost on gun control, they've lost on campaign spending, because in all of those cases they have been up against a large, rich industry with a lot to lose in the event of change.
Right, it should be 2. Gun advocates' policy prescriptions successfully camouflage how they favor the wealthy. And that column is a great example of that.
For the sake of the narrative, the name "Sharpton" contributes to the picture. Almost too good to be true, it has a Dickens-and-Thackeray quality in the way it points toward the impression.
109-110: I'm familiar with the "The market for civilian firearms was saturated until the companies incited demand for military-style weapons in the 1970s-80s" part of the story, but I realize now that I have no idea of the size of the firearms sector or any of the well-known participants. Is any of them in the Fortune 500?
I thought the trend was toward fewer people owning guns, but those that do own them getting crazier and crazier about stockpiling as many as they can.
112: unless Walmart counts, the answer appears to be no (the only company in the "Toys/Sporting Goods" sector in the Fortune 500 is Mattel).
LB's theory of media narrative, like her theory of sex and gender, is that there are simply no underlying facts. If you think Sharpton is a phony, that's because the media told you so, and couldn't possible be due to the fact that he's a phony. You live in NY! Do you remember Freddie's Fashion Mart? Do you remember "them Greek homos?" This is not a man of God we're talking about. It speaks to the treatment of African Americans in this country that someone as irresponsible as Sharpton is still pretty much right about race relations.
Why, why am I arguing about this? Off to swim!
Try here, from the Small Arms Survey. http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP14-US-Firearms-Industry.pdf
The biggest manufacturers are Ruger, S&W and Remington. Between them they have 41% of the market. Beretta and Colt are big in pistols as well.
113 is also correct, as Frum notices: in the US, 6% of households own 65% of the guns, and 65% of the households own 0% of the guns. (It averages out at one gun per person.)
Best number I could come up with is $11B US market for firearms and ammunition.
113: It's isn't just stockpiling, in the sense of wanting an arsenal, from what I've seen. It's collectors who want to have one of everything. Like the adults who collect Star Wars toys and leave them in the box, except less stupid and more dangerous. You can, if you want, listen politely while somebody tells you about how they have this one with the walnut stock and the blued barrel but are going to get the other one with the plastic stock and the chrome.
119: yes, that's about right. And it's heavily subdivided. Colt and Beretta are huge in pistols but nowhere in long arms (rifles or shotguns). Remington vice versa.
I am not sure why it's less stupid than collecting Star Wars toys.
I did like the factoid that, in the US, the number of people who go hunting at least once a year is roughly the same as the number of people who go to the ballet.
"You'll never hit one at the top of a grande jete. Wait for the fouette, she's pretty much stationary, then aim for centre of mass."
I am not sure why it's less stupid than collecting Star Wars toys.
Jar Jar alone makes it so.
Also, Baretta makes some beautiful shotguns. It's a minor status symbol to own one.
I did like the factoid that, in the US, the number of people who go hunting at least once a year is are roughly the same as the number of people who go to the ballet.
The few outliers who either hunt or go to the ballet are the true weirdos.
I'll let "huge in pistols" pass. This time.
off to swim: [early 21st century idiom]
To concede an argument or abandon a previously held rhetorical position. To remove oneself from a situation likely to only result in humiliation.
113: I like to think that this is equally true of ballet fans, but it doesn't seem like it. ... of course my view is from inside the bunker.
I can't tell whether the argument is "Right wingers using Sharpton as a bogeyman is racist and disgusting because the guy is just a blowhard, not a monster" in which case, yes, or "Al Sharpton: Admirable Person" in which case, no. For one thing, he helped to discredit important actual civil rights issues in the late 80s by being such a self-promoter and, in the Brawley case, IIRC actively lying well past the point at which the facts were pretty clear. In any case he's not generally been a net positive for causes I'm in favor of.
So it turns out that there was a common element in the 'rash' of burglaries that prompted our Stand Your Ground shooter to lay his trap: he leaves the garage door open.
I'm expecting local gun nuts to start claiming this was some kind of false flag operation by gun control advocates. The shooter is a federal employee (seasonal firefighter) so maybe its a Kenyan Muslim Socialist thing after all.
Today's news is that they guy has gotten death threats -- on Facebook! -- and is afraid to leave the house.
(Jews, they run everything)
Well, the NBA is kinda like organized crime. We ran both until another ethnic group came along that was crazier and more physical, at which point we decided that there were better ways for us to be involved, ways that allowed us to better use our comparative advantage.
More than a bit sad that Donald Sterling is a member of the tribe. Can we also ban him for life? (IIRC, that was Spinoza's fate.) Maybe a 2-for-1 deal that includes Sheldon Adelson? In fact, I could easily put together a list for an N-for-1 deal, while I'm at it.
132:
Who are hoping to pick up in this trade?
"Right wingers using Sharpton as a bogeyman is racist and disgusting because the guy is just a blowhard, not a monster" in which case, yes
This, at least. And I think the facts establishing that he's a blowhard or whatever you want to call do get read through the rules applicable to loudmouthed black men, rather than how they'd be applied to anyone else. (That is, the Tawana Brawley thing -- certainly, he seems to have misjudged things, but where his mistake was staying loyal to an apparently terribly abused young black woman after he should have known she was lying? I'm going to have a hard time holding that against him. Freddie's Fashion Mart? Sharpton was leading protests that a white-owned business shouldn't be expanding and forcing out a black-owned business next-door, and then a nutcase set the place on fire and killed himself and a bunch of other people. Sharpton was not calling for violence, not even in the plausibly deniable way anti-abortion people do against providers. The "homo" thing? Yeah, it's a slur he used twenty years ago. He's been out there working for gay rights since then. And so on. )
It's heart-warming to see you being so charitable, LB.
That is, the Tawana Brawley thing -- certainly, he seems to have misjudged things, but where his mistake was staying loyal to an apparently terribly abused young black woman after he should have known she was lying? I'm going to have a hard time holding that against him.
I don't. There were people placed in danger of very long prison terms because of Brawley's accusations and I have a very hard time believing that a teenage girl is the one that came up with the names of the people who wound up accused.
I try to preferentially direct my charity to people who are pretty much right about the big issues.
I have a very hard time believing that a teenage girl is the one that came up with the names of the people who wound up accused.
That's an accusation against Sharpton that's new to me -- that he invented Brawley's story. I'm not saying it's impossible, I just don't remember that as any part of the narrative from back when it was happening.
I try to preferentially direct my charity to people who are pretty much right about the big issues.
It takes LB 20 minutes of grilling about current events before she'll toss a quarter in a homeless guy's cup.
I phrased that wrong. I'm not saying he invented part of it. I don't know what happened there beyond that several people were falsely accused. But he was one of her advisers and the one who was most public about putting forward the names of the accused. He lost a defamation suit on the matter.
Seems to me he's basically just a classic old-school American urban politician -- an advocate for a poor, excluded community on the one hand (good!), sleazy, corrupt, blowhardy and distasteful on the other hand (bad!). There's always been tension in how people in the US vaguely on the left should respond to these types.
That's about right. I lean heavily toward the big tent on the left -- exclude people for being evil or unreliably on the right side of big issues, but small scale financial shenanigans or general uncouthness don't bother me much.
Bomani Jones on the Sterling Affair. He covers some of the same ground others cover about the performative sanctimony of Sterling's fate, but he does it with a special vigor and panache that's worth your time to genuinely enjoy.
Wow, that link in 55 is quite something.
About Sharpton, I only meant to observe that:
1) The idea that criticism of basically any and all racist actions or speech by white people can be adequately countered by "Oh yeah? Well Al Sharpton! So There!" is very bizarre.
2) This idea nevertheless has attained the status of common sense among large swaths of white conservatives.
146: I'm waiting for a link to a transcript.
I might make a transcript myself.
He says "they should get their heads out of their *clavens" - I think that's the spelling from some searching, but what is that word?
The idea that conservative animosity towards Al Sharpton is in any way animated by the factual details of various potentially scandalous or otherwise unsavory aspects of his personal and public life is completely laughable. They hate him because he's a loud black man in favor of reparations. There is really nothing else to it.
148: I haven't listened to it, but would Klavern, as in a KKK chapter, make any sense at all in context?
I can't endorse 142 strongly enough. I think a big part of the reason the Democratic Party punches below its weight* is that most of the power and guidance comes from an elite that ranges from wanting to keep its hands clean from dirty urban politics to being actually anti-democratic (that would be the Stevenson wing). There's a Laffer curve with embracing mildly corrupt urban pols - openly corrupt people will start to drive out the mildly corrupt, and you become the party of Daley and such - but IMO we're far from any sort of tipping point.
*that is, number of votes relative to popularity of policies/positions. In Presidential years, it comes closer, but in mid-term elections, we get clobbered. And who's really effective at getting hoi polloi to polling places? mildly corrupt urban pols (and union leaders)
I have a parbaked theory that conservatives are more likely to suspect liberals of treason because they see how easily liberals turn on their political allies.
And this is where my fundamental disagreement with Ogged comes in. If we withdraw the hem of our garment from everyone on the left who gets some mud thrown at them, we end up with no one standing. Pretty much everyone has some mud that can be fairly thrown: Sharpton isn't a plaster saint. Literally everyone can be besmirched with some kind of ginned up nonsense: look at what they did to Al Gore in 2000. I really want the reflex to be to stick with our people unless we've determined that they're really on the wrong side of the big issues.
148: He's referencing Cliff Claven from Cheers. (There's a scene in one of the later seasons where a fellow postal worker runs into Claven and at first seems impressed to meet him, telling him his name is a byword in the service. When Cliff asks why, the guy replies that he'd screwed up the other day and his supervisor told him to "get his head out of his Claven.")
Funny thing is, I had forgotten all about that until I heard Jones use the phrase.
And yes, 143 is impressive as hell. I can't imagine what the typical ESPN listener made of the Chicago stuff.
I am always reassured when I find out that other people have almost complete recall of ancient sitcoms. I'd hate if that were just me.
Sharpton is useful to the Right the way Benghazi or anything else is: These things symbolize something. It happens that Sharpton has a despicable history, but that's pretty much a coincidence, the same way that the deaths in Libya were incidental to the real story.
Yes to 141, 142, 149. That said, given 55 -- all of which was news to me -- I'm a bit surprised that Sharpton has a fairly prominent gig at MSNBC: financial shenanigans shouldn't normally be something a major news outfit gets tangled up in without some serious vetting, which perhaps has been done. Maybe Sharpton's financial arrangements have been cleaned up.
154: I don't disagree with the gist, but Sharpton was genuinely despicable in a way that ought to disqualify him from rehabilitation. Deliberately promulgating false accusations of rape is a very bad thing and while I'll often accept "everybody does it" as a defense for public figures, I don't think everybody does this.
Of course, if the Right wants to go all tu quoque on Sharpton, the obvious response is: George W. Bush. So yeah, I'm not going to get particularly excited about Sharpton's efforts to turn ethnic hostility into prison terms for innocent people. But it is what it is.
159: As noted above, it's probably true that more or less every minister with enough of a profile to be on TV has been part of similar shenanigans. Whether there's a line, and which side of it Sharpton is on, is unknown, but guys like Rick Warren (at the Inauguration!), Joel Osteen, and all of the Robertson types pull the same sort of shit, with million dollar homes (built by the churches, not by the ministers) and private jets and all sorts of shit.
I think the networks basically feel that, as long as the congregations are OK with it, they should be OK with it.
There's a Laffer curve with embracing mildly corrupt urban pols - openly corrupt people will start to drive out the mildly corrupt, and you become the party of Daley and such - but IMO we're far from any sort of tipping point.
Don't you mean Gresham's Law rather than Laffer Curve.
Yglesias* makes an interesting point about the tax implication if Sterling is forced to sell the Clippers:
[T]hanks to §1014 of the Internal Revenue Code ("basis of property acquired from a decedent"), known to tax junkies as the stepped-up basis rule. The way this works is that if you sell an asset you inherited, the basis for calculating your investment profits is the fair market price of the asset at the time you inherited it rather than the price the person you inherited it from originally paid. Which is to say that if you inherit the Clippers and then sell the team right away, you pay no capital gains tax.
* I still don't feel good about the fact the Vox is having Yglesias write about the NBA. Thinking about it, I'm inclined to violate the analogy ban and say that you could say they same thing about the benefits that he provides as people say about High Frequency Trading -- it only increases liquidity information under normal conditions. When there's a genuinely problematic case they are likely to make it worse. But I'm willing to hope that he's improved.
I don't think he ought to be disqualified from rehabilitation. That's a bit much.
It doesn't have the same force in transcript, but here you go.
Host: Bomani, did any of this make you angry? Anything?
Bomani: No.
Host: Why?
Bomani: Like, I mean, the things that Sterling did - I mean, I don't want to make this too personal, but this is a very important thing to me. I had a very good friend of mine die on Friday night going into Saturday in Chicago, named Leonore Draper. She had planned an anti-violence rally, and she attended that rally that she helped organize on Friday, and died that night on her block, we have no idea who shot her, we will probably never know who out there's shooting her. We hear all this stuff that goes on in Chicago and all these people who die, who lose their lives, on one hand we lose the humanity because it's so many people that we don't think to personalize them. Now you gave it a person. She and I were close enough that she put me in her husband's wedding party because of the level of close we are. These are people I see, I watch them roll into a person that would organize a rally like the one after which she died, right. All that stuff that's happening in Chicago is a byproduct of housing discrimination. I was talking to one person the other day who will tell you that there are large swaths of land in Chicago in between the south suburbs and downtown, just on the South Side, that people simply don't live in, because in Chicago, when black people moved to that city from the South in the 1940's and 1950's, white people got the hell out of Dodge. They built a freeway system that ran through black neighborhoods and the whole purpose of that freeway system was to get white people from the suburbs into their jobs safely without having to make any stops in between. That's what housing discrimination does. Housing discrimination is the biggest reason that we could point to historically for why we got all these dead kids in Chicago, fighting for turf, fighting for real estate with poor accommodations and facilities and everything that you're supposed to have within a city, poor education, all of this, because the tax dollars and everything else decided to move away. And a lot of people like to use as a strategy to avoid that, it's, to find an apartment in one of those nice neighborhoods so then they can send their kids to nicer schools, to have a chance for their kids to go somewhere in life. Instead, when you can't do that, you wind up in basically these neighborhoods that are created by apartheid, and they're desolate, and they're dangerous, and they're frightening, and we just have whole generations of people that we have given up on. And the biggest reason that this sort of thing is happening is because jackwagons like Donald Sterling make this decision, that they do not want black people, or Mexicans or anybody else, living near these pristine white people who are trying like hell to get away from us, and then point at us and wonder why all your stuff is messed up. That's the stuff that Donald Sterling has been doing forever. Everybody talks about that settlement in 2009; he was originally sued in 2003 for this housing discrimination. In 2006 we got ahold of the paperwork where he says that black people smell and attract vermin and that Mexicans just sit around and drink all day. His wife was going around to those properties knocking on the door, like it's some Harry Ford stuff, and taking inspections, posing as, so she worked for the government while she was tracking the ethnicity of the people who lived in their buildings--and you're going to come to me and talk about what's going on with Donald Sterling and his mistress? Are you kidding me? That stuff was real, that stuff matters, that stuff literally kills people, and everybody and their mom is so charged up about Donald Sterling. So I want to go to a funeral next week for someone who took somebody else's bullet because that city's become a war zone, and the people that have money and the people who could possibly do something to fix it, ignore it, and go to their homes in the south suburbs that for the last 70 years people tried their damnedest to keep black people out of, but I'm supposed to get charged up because Donald Sterling said his rich friends don't want his black mistress to be around black people. People need to get their heads out their clavens and realize that this here is fun to talk about, but this is nothing. The real stuff that happened was that. So when all these guys get up here and stand on their soapbox and wag their fingers and starting talking about, oh, we won't tolerate this racism, we won't tolerate what Donald Sterling said, what they're not tolerating about Donald Sterling is the fact that what he said was impolite, and what he said was gauche. That's what their problem is. But when Donald Sterling was out here toying with people's lives, on things that really mattered as matters of life and death, the media, the NBA, the sponsors and all these people now who want to get patted on the back for what good people they are, didn't say a mumblin' word. They can all kiss my behind. Every single one of them. Because when we saw looking at all these people who are dying as an economic byproduct of the people like Donald Sterling and you now had a problem because oh my God, he said something that intimated that he doesn't respect his players, I'm calling you out as a fraud.
Host: It cannot be said better than that anywhere. It is also dispiriting. Like, it's, it is - there's an element of it that is totally dispiriting, Bomani, because this is gonna be the news cycle and the noise cycle for the next however long this lasts, and what you just said right there can't creep its way into the news cycle.
Bomani: Well, we gotta find a way, though, because the thing people need to stop doing is people need to stop lying about their levels of concern about race. Look, I can live with the people every day who tell me I talk about race all the time and tell me I scream racism all the time, because they never say anything about when racism screams at me. When racism screams at me, I'm supposed to shut up and take it like a soldier, right? If that's what you want, I've gotten pretty far in life. Maybe that's the technique you think that I'm supposed to have, right? Maybe that's what it is. But when the real stuff happens, nobody has anything to say, and if you were to ask people, what exactly did Donald Sterling say that intimated his own level of racism, a whole lot of people are going to have a hard time saying it, but then you go ask those people how many things they do so that they don't look like they like black people around their friends, which you'd think these people who get up on the Internet and tell me stuff like I normally don't agree with you, comma, but, dot dot dot - you don't think that's what they're doing? What they're doing is they're saying hey, this guy has a good point, but I don't want you to think for a second I'm out here agreeing with this crazy rabble-rousing, right? That's what people are doing out here all the time. They talk about this with the NBA and they keep calling this a black league - this is an American league! So that's why you wind up with a columnist at the LA Times who said that if Donald Sterling has a problem with black people he should go own a hockey team - what, because it's supposed to be okay in hockey? So if you own a team over there you can be racist and nobody cares about it? No, no, no, no, no. A whole lot of these people that want to act like they care about racism don't give a good damn about racism. What they care about, right now, is a chance to jump on an easy punching bag. But when I sit up here and dance this up here, and other people sit up here and tell you about real things that are happening, and try to break it down and explain to you and make you understand the things that you might not be able to recognize on your own, that someone with a more trained eye to these things could possibly help you with, you act like I'm inventing stuff. Well, now, eight years after I wrote a column, even my editors when I wrote it admitted that they didn't give it enough play when they put it up there. Eight years after I wrote that, now everybody wants to come around and hail me as having some amazing level of foresight for seeing this coming--I didn't see this coming, I saw this happen! So where the hell was everybody else when it was actually happening? They were out here trying to tell me that I was crazy about racism, but now you know it. Because Donald Sterling's mistress put out a tape, and an 81-year-old man said you're embarrassing me by coming to games with black people.
Re 159, I think he's still paying the back taxes that came up in 2008, which is both a lot more current and a lot more money than the stuff in 55.
160: If I thought it was well established that he was knowingly lying about people he believed to be innocent, I'd agree with you.
I am impossibly unmotivated today and incredibly uninformed and have nothing to say about Al Sharpton. Please hurry up, today.
Don't you mean Gresham's Law rather than Laffer Curve. Not really - I ended up echoing Gresham in the part in dashes, but my basic idea was that, just as raising tax rates at some point reduces tax revenues, embracing dirty urban pols at some point reduces vote gains.
The mechanism is where the Gresham part comes in, because (I'm speculating) you start by embracing typical, mildly corrupt local pols*, who are (reasonably) effective both at governance and at getting out the vote, but the more you embrace them, the more corruption is enabled (because being seen as corrupt is no longer disqualifying), and effectiveness drops, plus the party becomes associated with corruption.
I'm not actually sure how you thread this needle, but I think the national party errs on the side of turning up its nose at even ostensibly corrupt locals (even though, in reality, corruption still thrives; if national Dems having a no tolerance policy for corruption meant that no Dem-led polity suffered from corruption, it might be worth the loss of some votes. But that's not the equilibrium we're in).
*note that I don't think there's really anything inherently more corrupt about being an urban pol; I assume that all local pols are more or less corrupt, because power corrupts &c.
163: Yeah, regardless of what I might have said before, I agree that it might be possible to rehabilitate Yglesias.
It's heart-warming to see you being so charitable, LB.
Heh, I was thinking the same thing. And I often share the sentiment but Sharpton's a bit much for me.
Hey, Bomani Jones at 143 is awesome! thanks, Castock.
For what it's worth, it's not the entirety of the media that's ignoring housing discrimination and urban policy as a significant source of ill for African Americans. Melissa Harris-Perry talks about it pretty constantly; Ta-Nehisi Coates does; numerous scholars and urban and public policy historians do; Khalil Gibran Muhammed does (The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America) - I've linked to this a number of times ...
And most of these commentators are black, and so mostly invisible to the (white) mainstream.
If I thought it was well established that he was knowingly lying about people he believed to be innocent, I'd agree with you.
I do think that and yet I don't agree, given sufficient time passing without similarly egregious stuff. That is, I'm sure he at first believed Brawnley, but I can't he imagine he continued to do so once it became clear that the evidence didn't support her story, and yet IIRC he continued accusing people well after that happened.
That's fair. That is, I don't remember his ever actually disavowing belief in her initial story, the publicity just ran its course. While I don't remember the precise details of the timeline and his statements, there was probably a point at which it was both pretty clear that her story was untrue, and at which Sharpton was still out there saying things -- I am cutting him slack for that, under the assumption that it probably happened, as not having had any particular additional negative effect on the accused.
Is everyone else flashing back to the "Tawana Told The Truth" graffiti in Do The Right Thing?
175: No. The only thing that's really relevant is whether Sharpton is corrupt now, and your "lifting the hem of your garment" remark remains spot on.
small scale financial shenanigans or general uncouthness don't bother me much
Well, let's be honest, how else could you survive practicing in the NY State judicial system?
More seriously, I generally agree with you. My main beef with Sharpton is simply that he didn't do a better job on behalf of the community he claims to represent, because his ego and general ridiculousness got in the way. But any problem with Al Sharpton is probably like number 948234792348923 on the list of problems we should be worrying about.
164, 166: I appreciate the transcript.
Moby, you should see Do The Right Thing. It's pretty powerful, or at least it was back in the day, at the time. I saw it in a theater in Amherst, Massachusetts (hotbed of sensitivity) when it first came out, and I still recall the quiet upset with which the entire crowd exited the theater. Buncha white folks. None of that chattering that you normally hear upon exiting a film screening. Mostly silence.
Good work, Spike Lee.
The internet ruined my attention span. I can't watch anything that long.
Maybe someone will provide a transcript.
It doesn't have the same force in transcript, but here you go.
Thanks for the transcript; that is amazingly strong, and right on, and I probably wouldn't have listened to it without seeing that.
183: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Do-The-Right-Thing.html
More than you ever wanted to know about the Brawley grand jury report.
Why is Moby joking about being unwilling or unable to watch Do The Right Thing? Is this an actual joke, and he has seen it, or what?
Why is Moby being addressed in the third person when he's right here?
Parsimon needs an explanation, episode #1431.
Anyway, I have not seen "Do the Right Thing" and probably won't. I'm sure it's a great movie, but I'm not a huge movie fan except for really, really stupid movies.
I was impressed when I saw it when it came out, but that was in the eighties and I was a teenager. I'd expect it's probably dated quite a bit.
When it came out, I was living a in town that had only two movie screens and more movie screens than African Americans.
Why is Moby being addressed in the third person when he's right here?
Apologies: I thought you were gone.
He was standing behind a potted plant.
So Sterling says he won't sell, and the right has decided that Magic Johnson set him up.
197.last: good lord I wish that was true. How awesome would that be?
I saw Do the Right Thing in a theater with an almost exclusively African American audience. I was fascinated at the points at which people cheered. It was probably the first time I was really smacked in the face with how little I understood of black people, and particularly with their attitudes about white people.
I remember Siskel and/or Ebert commenting that the movie was one that you spend more time talking about than the movie's actual running time - which we did.
I know. I would be so impressed if Magic Johnson had arranged it and could pull off the sale.
I'm sort of visualizing Magic Johnson as one of the leads in The Sting, now. Or some kind of con movie requiring hats.
It would be even better if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had arranged it and will announce this with a series of newspaper ads signed "Roger Murdock".
Minivet, fantastic work on 164.
This article mentions Johnson as one of many interested investors. There's also a group from Seattle, hell-bent on reincarnating the SuperSonics.
203: Indeed 164 is fantastic work.
the right has decided that Magic Johnson set him up.
Magic arranged the whole thing from his secret underground base in Benghazi.
People, Minivet didn't write 164. Homer did.
The mainstream media says that Oprah wants to buy the Clippers.
Erm. Somewhere along the line, recently, at TPM, there was a post by a reader explaining that his mother, a former Oprah fan, no longer cared for her. This was part of TPM's series on the Fox News phenomenon: the poster felt that Fox News had turned his mother against black people. I had to wonder whether it might have had to do with the news not long ago that Oprah got into a fuss in Switzerland or somewhere in which she was, allegedly, dissed (for being black) when trying to buy a $10,000 handbag.
I mean to say that while the sporting society may or may not correct for racist ownership in the NBA, maybe private ownership of sports teams should be reexamined altogether. Or is this a total non-starter in the team-owning world?
The Green Bay Packers are a non-profit, community-owned sports team. In Wisconsin.
209: IIRC the owners got together and made sure (via rule changes) nothing like what happened with the Packers would ever happen again. Too democratic for a bunch of billionaires.
|| Remember that Montana judge who sentenced the teacher who raped a student (who subsequently killed herself) to 31 days? Because, in part, the kid was just as much in control, and older than her chronological age? Reversed, remanded for new sentencing by a new judge.
The idea that C.M. could have "control" of the situation is directly at odds with the law, which holds that a youth is incapable of consent and, therefore, lacks any control over the situation whatsoever. That statement also disregards the serious power disparity that exists between an adult teacher and his minor pupil. In addition, there is no basis in the law for the court's distinction between the victim's "chronological age" and the court's perception of her maturity. Judge Baugh's comments have given rise to several complaints before the Judicial Standards Commission, which has recommended disciplinary action by this Court. Those complaints will be addressed in a separate proceeding. Under these circumstances, we conclude that reassignment to a new judge is necessary to preserve the appearance of fairness and justice in this matter.
|>
210: I was gobsmacked that the NBA "constitution" was confidential. Released to the public yesterday as part of this whole brouhaha.
Or, wrote a poetic speech using an analogy based on a misapprehension of fact. I mean, that's why analogies are banned, but really, that's not wrongdoing.
215: Wait, using a stretcher in political rhetoric now makes one a race hustler?
They're going to need some new art to replace all those paintings and busts in the Capitol rotunda.
Obama once called Boehner his friend from the great state of Ohio, but I checked, and they're not really friends, and Obama doesn't like Ohio much at all. Impeach the race hustler in chief.
I vote kr most improved troll (in the old school Usenet sense of the term).
Another claim sets the origin in Usenet in the early 1990s as in the phrase "trolling for newbies", as used in alt.folklore.urban (AFU).[24][25] Commonly, what is meant is a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, presenting questions or topics that had been so overdone that only a new user would respond to them earnestly. For example, a veteran of the group might make a post on the common misconception that glass flows over time. Long-time readers would both recognize the poster's name and know that the topic had been discussed a lot, but new subscribers to the group would not realize, and would thus respond. These types of trolls served as a practice to identify group insiders. This definition of trolling, considerably narrower than the modern understanding of the term, was considered a positive contribution.[24][26] One of the most notorious AFU trollers, David Mikkelson,[24] went on to create the urban folklore website Snopes.com.
Oh, sorry about that. It didn't seem that far off the kinds of things that were being said seriously.
(It's funny, I fall for deadpan stupid all the time. I shouldn't, given that I do it myself kidding around, but I've got a bit of a blind spot there.)
I wouldn't have done it if LB hadn't first.
208-210: I see no obvious downside to nationalizing all of the (US) pro sports leagues/franchises et cetera. Maybe a slight issue with the Canadian teams, esp. in the NHL.
I must have missed his reappearance earlier, but: Castock! Yay!
It was very uncomfortable being in a room yesterday with a dozen or so other people all of whom were expressing shock and grief on behalf of Sterling regarding the bad fortune he has suffered in this whole affair. I guess previously getting my sense of public opinion on this issue solely from unfogged comment threads led me to a false sense of how un-sympathetic people generally felt towards him.
199: I saw Do the Right Thing in a theater with an almost exclusively African American audience.
I saw Higher Learning (the 1995 Michael Rapaport-as-a-Nazi-skinhead movie) in a theater with an almost exclusively African American audience, right after having shaved my head for some reason. I honestly didn't think anything of it, and apart from a few snide remarks, there wasn't any trouble. Which suggests that white folx should be way more chill about being in large groups of Black people.
225: Who??? The National Review is taking the line of "Sterling is a terrible racist, but the privacy invasion is the real issue", but I haven't seen anyone express grief on his behalf.
225 -- I was in a room with two (old, white) people yesterday who have worked with Sterling professionally, and who both said he was the most disgusting sleazebag they've ever dealt with, which for these two is really really saying something.
230.last: Deprecated. Even if it comes at the price of the occasional misunderstanding.
But, yes, folks like NRO are well-practiced in the art of strategic retreat when one of the pack gets too far out of line. Unfortunately, on ACORN they were given cover by the useless cuntfucks at the Times, WaPo etc. so they could let their freak flag boldly fly.
Making explicit what folks have said above, Sharpton trolls white America pretty hard (especially older white America). Maybe not all by design but it certainly has that effect. My parents, for instance, despite having moved "leftward" over the course of their lives on social (and economic) issues just cannot get past a guy like Sharpton. I'd say it's a mix of going along with the narrative, legitimate concerns, and a continuing base level of learned racism on their part. (And the narrative is of course heavily-influenced by both explicit and implicit racism in society at large.)
*Even my mother who has moved from being the "last Liberal Republican"** to OPINIONATED LIBERAL GRANDMA terrorizing her bridge group.
**She says her victims usually concede to her that today's Republicans are crass idiots (although they still vote for them), which opens the door to her saying, "Oh him! He's the one that drove me out of the Republican Party."
In conclusion, ogged is an older white American. Or at least he plays on on the 'net.
She says her victims usually concede to her that today's Republicans are crass idiots (although they still vote for them)
This is the trend that makes me think we're doomed.
To keep my hopes up, I cling to the example of my sister-in-law, who was (maybe still is) active in Orange County republican politics, but voted for Obama twice (Sarah Palin was the final straw that did it, I'm not sure what the motive was in 2012).
228: That was close to their position. The consensus seemed to be "yes, the guy said something horribly racist, but now his life is completely ruined." (Much of this is a paraphrase but "his life is completely ruined" is a direct quote.) And to have all of this happen just because he "slipped up" and said something stupid and racist, and his mistress recorded it, seems like a cruel injustice. ("There but for the grace of god.... we've all said things we regretted, but once it's on tape and the media frenzy kicks in, you're toast.") And how his crazy mistress probably thought she was doing something to get back at him, but could have never anticipated it blowing up into such a huge issue, and boy she must feel terrible about herself now, the stupid girl. Now she's ruined, too. It's all a great tragedy. Etc.
These were just ordinary rich Southern white people.
One of my former students, a conservative actuary, has recently had a lot of FB statuses of the form, "Speaking as a true conservative, I don't like it when [Republicans do X/did you notice poor people have it really rough/executive salaries could perhaps be capped]" He gets these links from places like Forbes which seem to sometimes run progressive pieces. It restores my faith in humanity in the concavity of the decline of humanity.
It's all a great tragedy.
"You know, like Caligula."
The National Review is taking the line of "Sterling is a terrible racist, but the privacy invasion is the real issue"
Oddly, Kareem took a similar position (okay, his position is, Sterling deserves punishment for his substantive failings, not for this tape).
He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn't want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn't we have all called for his resignation back then?
Shouldn't we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn't we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen's privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney's comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn't steal the cake but we're all gorging ourselves on it.
Could you speculate irresponsibly?
