Somehow Donald Sterling's wife won her court case against V. Stiviano and recovered $2.6 million.

I know. It would be a lot more interesting if we could remember who these damned people are, but there was a time, not that long ago, when we felt compelled to talk about them constantly and to develop all sorts of detailed opinions about their doings. Something about basketball and a secret recording with some racism in it... remember?

Anyway:

In a long legal battle between the two women that ended Tuesday, Shelly Sterling argued the money and gifts her husband generously lavished on Stiviano, weren’t his to lavish. It was joint property. In California, assets earned in marriage belong to both parties and cannot be given away without consent. And Shelly Sterling most definitely did not do that.

The old joint property move!

"This whole thing is just scary... It’s emails, it’s your private stuff. And the whole town is scared . . . nobody knows what to do."

"You say the wrong thing — you see what happened to [Sterling]... I’m not defending what Sterling said at all, but if that’s not the First Amendment then what the [bleep] is? And what did he say, ‘I don’t want my girlfriend hanging out with black basketball players’? Me neither!"

Said Chris Rock. 

"Levenson’s demise was beginning even as he was one of Sterling’s most ardent critics...."

"Bruce Levenson announced that he would be selling his interest in the Atlanta Hawks... after a three-month investigation into a 2012 e-mail he had written to Hawks executives about the racial makeup of fans at games."

It’s a well-written, thoughtful e-mail — the opposite of the coarse remarks that cost Donald Sterling his ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers — but it’s no less offensive....

“My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base,” Levenson wrote in the e-mail that the Hawks were attracting an “overwhelming black audience” and noted that “there are few fathers and sons at the games.” He went on to compare the cities. “Even [Washington], D.C., with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience.”

Thoughtful, written analysis should count more than emotional spoken remarks, of course (contrary to the view of the linked WaPo writer). And Levenson was writing in the context of conducting the business of basketball, while Sterling was having an argument about his personal relationship. So Levenson really deserves to be in more trouble. On the other hand, the lesson taught by the Levenson case will be much more difficult to follow in practice. Can the economics of the spectator-sports business be discussed in terms of the race of the fans?

I encounter 5 items of celebrity news.

1. The snake that bit one of the dancers in a rehearsal of the Nicki Minaj song "Anaconda" was a "boa constrictor named Rocky who has been in the entertainment business for 15 years." A boa constrictor is not an anaconda, but the snake had no way to know the song was celebrating some other species of snake. Nor do I think the snake could take offense at the lyrics and think something like: That's all I am to you, something that reminds you of a body part of one of your kind, not as a unique individual with many facets to my serpentine being other than serving as a hyperbolic metaphor for the human penis? Do you even know about the snake's penis? Am I simply a big penis to you? Do you even know who I am? I am Rocky, a veteran of 15 years in the entertainment business! I think a boa constrictor bites when it feels threatened, so if the 15-years-in-the-entertainment-business snake bit a dancer, he must have felt really scared. He doesn't know his name is Rocky, a name that connotes a tough guy. He's just a snake. He doesn't know what snakes mean to us, and he's not really in the business, is he? Not from his perspective. He's not getting any coins, as Nicky might put it. He's a confused, frightened creature in an incomprehensible environment, fighting for survival. And that's our favorite phallic symbol.

2. Jennifer Lopez says: "I like being in a relationship. I’m not one to like, whore around, and stuff like that — that’s not my thing." Is she calling other ladies "whores"? Is that allowed these days? She used "whore" as a verb, naming the action, not the person. That might be a love-the-sinner/hate-the-sin kind of attitude, but then she didn't ever say whoring around is bad, only that it's not her "thing." Do your own thing. That's what we said in the 60s, often along with its corollary: Let it all hang out. The Isley Brothers sang: "It's your thing/Do what you wanna do/I can't tell you/Who to sock it to." Some people — like Jennifer Lopez — find that their thing is having sex with their own spouse. No judgment. It's all good. You whores.

3. That bad old billionaire racist Donald Sterling had fallen out of the news, and here's V. Stiviano rescuing him from that fate and averring that the old man is gay and she was his beard. This is not attention whoring — is that word permissible? — because Stiviano is fighting against a lawsuit filed against her by Sterling's wife Shelly, who accuses her of being "a thief and an embezzler," which provides the basis for a counterclaim of defamation.

4. To stop his descent into into a condition I think is called Jack Nicholsonism, Leonardo DiCaprio must lose 10 pounds. "He has given up pasta – and he loves pasta... He also plans on working out more and he is taking his bike wherever he goes." DiCaprio is about to turn 40, and his girlfriend is a 21-year-old model named Toni Garrn, who apparently either wants to make very sure we pronounce the "r" in her name or is a pirate. We're told of Garrrrrn that "Of course she doesn’t care" that Leo is fat. Why would Leo be with anyone who would say she cares that he's fat when he's fat? I love you just the way you are. That's what Billy Joel sang, back in 1979, stealing, he admits, the last line of the 4 Seasons song "Rag Doll," which was inspired by a squeegee-man girl who extracted $20 from Bob Gaudio. Did Joel have any particular person in mind? Yeah. His first wife, and she didn't even like the song. Joel went through 2 more wives, including a 23-year-old that he married when he was 55. Oh, but don't be too mean to Mr. Joel. He has "battled depression for many years," and once tried to kill himself by drinking furniture polish. Furniture polish? "It looked tastier than bleach." But good luck to DiCaprio, whether he chooses to remain boyishly cute or become the jolly roué. Flabby or toned, he'll always be cuter than Billy Joel, and good for him for never divorcing anyone. He has never married.

5. Speaking of fat, Warner Brothers is in trouble for "fat shaming" in its new direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie "Frankencreepy." Some curse causes Daphne Blake to go from size 2 to size 8, but size 8 is depicted more like size 22, and Tom Burns of The Good Men Project writes: "It's sad to think that my daughter can’t even watch a cartoon about a dog solving mysteries without negative body stereotypes being thrown in her face." But apparently, there's an argument that the curse is that each character loses what she (or he) is most afraid to lose, and the only reason Daphe loses her fine figure is that she's too damned in love with it in the first place. This notion of curses tailored to each psyche is familiar. In one of my favorite movies, "The Witches of Eastwick," Satan (the above-mentioned Jack Nicholson) curses the various women with their own fears, and in the case of Cher, the fear is snakes. Watch Cher wake up in a bedful of snakes. Can somebody check the IMDB page on those snakes? I want to know how long they've been in the entertainment business and what are their degrees of separation from Rocky?

"Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling does not have the authority to stop a $2 billion sale of his team..."

".. because he has been determined to be mentally unfit to make decisions related to the family trust..."

Now, there's a clever move in a devious game, right?

If Donald Sterling sues, he "could attempt to use pretrial discovery to portray NBA owners as hypocritical."

"He'd argue that if he is being expelled over bigoted comments, he'd want to know why other owners haven't suffered the same fate over similar statements. Along those lines, Sterling would likely demand that former commissioner David Stern testify about his knowledge of owner misconduct."

The NBA is well-poised to argue that Sterling's pending ouster is mainly due to the impact of his conduct -- which nearly triggered a player boycott, caused sponsors to drop the Clippers and led to critical words from President Obama -- rather than the conduct itself.

How "well-poised" do you think that argument is? The legal question seems to depend on rules that the owners all signed onto and whether Sterling violated those rules, not on whether other people were ready to engage in damaging conduct in response to things Sterling said.

More legal details here.

"So let me get this straight, we should concede that there's no such thing anymore as a private conversation..."

"... so therefore remember to 'lawyer' everything you say before you say it, and hey, speaking your mind was overrated anyway, so you won't miss it. Well, I'll miss it, I'll miss it a lot."

"I’m talking to a girl. I’m trying to have sex with her..."

"If you were trying to have sex with a girl and you’re talking to her privately and you don’t think anybody’s there, you may say anything in the world!... So they should take away for life your team [if] you say the wrong thing to a girl?... I know what I said was wrong."

Sterling speaks... again.

At CBS DC right now, surprising results of a sidebar poll about Donald Sterling.

Perhaps the poll appears other places as well, but in any case, I think this response is very different from what the media wanted to make people think:



I happened to notice the poll because I'd clicked to the article "US Attorney To Oversee Lerner Contempt Case Appointed By Obama." Feel free to discuss that topic as well. I hope 2 completely different topics doesn't produce chaos in the topics. I'm not going to perform any these-topics-actually-are-related theater for you.

Have at it.

"The Beverly Hills Hotel is like the Clippers; the Sultan of Brunei is like Donald Sterling."

"Does that make it clear?"

"I think Mr. Sterling is being tested right now by a higher power or being and I’m forced to come to his rescue because he can’t rescue himself."

Says V. Stiviano, interviewed by Barbara Walters:



ADDED: "[A] beautiful black model named Jasmine... asked Sterling if she could take a photo with him..."

... and he responded, "I'm not that popular right now. Are you sure?' Jasmine said she was game...

As for how Jasmine feels about Sterling, she says, "It's 2014. I feel that everyone is a little bit racist and comedians joke about it all the time. But yeah, I do think he's racist."

"We deal with the actual character of the person as we see it and as it is displayed."

Said Leon Jenkins, who has resigned from his leadership of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, displaying his character. How do you see it and deal with it?

"This Town Needs a Better Class of Racist."

That's the title of an interesting essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic.

The idea is, roughly, that Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling are so crudely racist that we look at them, easily see that they are quite awful, deserving condemnation, and — this is the bad part — not at all like me and everyone I know. If those two are to be America's stereotypical "racists," it's going to get even harder to see the subtle, below-board, pervasive forms of racism that Coates and others have been urging us to perceive. We will self-indulgently feel smug that: 1. We've ostracized the racists, and 2. We are nothing like the racists.

If you're wondering what "Town" needs a "Better Class of Racist," I assume the town is Gotham, that is, that Coates means to evoke The Joker:



But it's this whole country Coates thinks needs a "better class of racist." He wants us to have to confront and mentally anguish over individuals who: 1. Are nice and normal enough that we identify with and cannot distance ourselves from, and 2. We're somehow compelled to perceive as racist.

I wonder what Coates would be willing to do to smoke out some high-class racists like that? And what would it take — especially after the harsh treatment of Bundy and Sterling — for Americans to respond to invitations to see nice-enough fellow citizens as racists?

"If you’re attracted to owning a sports team, there is something very sinister about you."

From a Daily Beast interview with John Oliver (who has a new HBO show that satirizes the news):

There is this cult of moral outrage that exists today, where people turn even the slightest indiscretion into a huge scandal.

Because it’s easy, and there’s no time for thought.

Take the Donald Sterling thing. Racist old guy, with a mistress…

…in a league which has tolerated this, systemically, over a decade—and not just from him, but other asshole owners. If you’re attracted to owning a sports team, there is something very sinister about you. There is a much deeper problem. It’s pathetic.

Yes, let's dig much more deeply into the etiology of sports-team ownership. Don't over-focus on Sterling, who's already toast. What about the rest of them? And it's not just about race, it's about sex.

Notice how in Oliver's answers to the prompts — they're not really questions — he's complaining both about using scandals because they are so easy and the newsfolk don't have to think much, but also saying that the same material that is so titillating deserves more attention, more investigation, more broad-ranging thought.

I think I agree with that. If you're going to latch onto Sterling and demonize and destroy him in a few days, you're setting a standard that you have to be willing to apply in a principled, across-the-board manner. You can't ethically take your fill of Sterling, then walk away satisfied.

Why Donald Sterling has a big incentive to fight the forced sale to death. Literally.

"Forced Sale of the L.A. Clippers Could Cost Donald Sterling $100-$200 Million in Taxes." These are capital gains taxes. Sterling bought the team cheap, and if he must sell, he'll sell high.

He's 81, and if he dies and passes the asset to his heirs, their asset will begin at the current market value, avoiding an immense tax burden.

That's Sterling's motivation to mount a time-consuming legal fight, even if it's one he ultimately loses. He's got $100+ million in taxes to save by dying before the team is sold. Not that you can take it with you. You can't. But if he cares about his family, or if he hates to see the government get all that money, he's going to fight like hell.

Does he care about his family? I see that he has 2 living children. There was a third child who died a little over a year ago, seemingly of a drug overdose.

There's some dispute over whether the hate-object-of-the-week Donald Sterling is a Republican or a Democrat:

According to Los Angeles County records, Sterling has been a registered Republican since at least 1998. Sterling has also made campaign contributions to at least three Democratic candidates as well — Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, former California Gov. Gray Davis and former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, a former basketball star.

I'm going to guess he's a Republican, because I think he's going to fight the forced sale like mad, and it's the Republicans who hate taxes.

A Democrat would humbly remit $100-200 million to the government in honor of the principle that taxes are good because government is good:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt once remarked that “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” And Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. expressed a similar sentiment when he said that “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization."

"I am banning Mr. Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers association or the NBA."

"Mr. Sterling may not attend any NBA games or practices, he may not be present at any Clippers facility, and he may not participate in any business or decisions involving the team."

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced just now. He's also imposing a $2.5 million fine and urging the owners to vote to force Sterling to sell the team. The press conference was quite interesting, with many references to the NBA constitution and Silver's powers under it, which, of course, I have never studied. Obviously, Silver has his lawyers. It's interesting that so much could be done so quickly and in the heat of immediate outrage over remarks made in what was a private conversation with one other person.

ADDED: Silver is getting praise for his great leadership, and there was immense pressure on him to act to control the severe damage to the interests of the team's players. I question how much process he gave to Sterling — other than to get a confession that the voice on the tape was Sterling's — but I am guessing that Silver determined that it was worth it to act boldly and to deal with Sterling's legal responses after the fact.

"Donald Sterling and the Neverending Fantasy of ‘Democrat’ Racism/Oh, how eager the conservative press is to call Donald Sterling a Democrat!"

"It’s all part of their larger fantasy narrative about conservatism and race," says Michael Tomasky (at The Daily Beast).

It must be so annoying to Democrats that this idiot .1%-er Donald Sterling stepped on the Cliven Bundy, Republican racist fantasy story.

But Tomasky is right, I think, to say Sterling sure wasn't much of a Democrat.

"You're supposed to be a delicate white or a delicate Latina girl."/"I'm a mixed girl."/"Ok well."

Horrific people in the news. Never heard of them before. Old man with no decent right to be jealous is jealous of his arguably beautiful, inarguably younger girlfriend. Somewhat young woman lets the whole world eavesdrop on her pathetic argument with a repulsive billionaire.