Well, that escalated quickly.
Audio recordings of Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling, telling his girlfriend not to be seen in public with black people (Instagram counts as “the public”), leaked Friday night on TMZ. By the following Tuesday, he was banned from the NBA for life.
Raise your hand if you saw that coming.
Not the “Donald Sterling is racist” part, but the “getting kicked out of the NBA forever” part, mind you. Because people knew about the former for years. During a sworn testimony from a 2003 housing discrimination lawsuit, Sterling is quoted as saying hispanics “smoke, drink, and just hang around the building”, while blacks “smell and attract vermin” (Sterling paid upwards of $5 million in settlements for this case). He paid $2.765 million in a settlement after being accused of housing discrimination in 2009.
::Quora: Who is most responsible for holding Donald Sterling accountable?::
This was old news to many, including Bomani, who wrote this now prescient, much discussed article in 2006 – which received more hits this past week than it did when first published. As Bomani’s put it on LeBatard in this now viral clip, it’s much easier to jump on stupid things people say (especially when it involves mistresses) than it is to face the roots of an issue (can we go back to discussing mistresses please?). And for all the social media outrage and rumored player boycotts, the story gained a new momentum only after Clippers’ sponsors like Kia and State Farm pulled their financial support from the team.
The question above of who is most responsible for holding Sterling may be outdated with NBA commissioner Adam Silver banning him for life, as well as fining him $2.5 million (answers for the above question ranged from “the LA community” to “himself”). Maybe a more poignant question should be “what took so long”? Better leave that to the next time someone gets caught with their pants down.
Social Media To The Rescue
People have asked themselves what the point of tweeting is as long as Twitter’s been around. Twitter came of age, and showed it seriousness, during the Iran’s election protest in 2009, thus proving to Twitter existentialists that spending all day on Twitter did matter. A year later, protesters for the Arab Spring used Facebook as an organizational tool. See, this thing matters.
At the end of March, a tweet from The Colbert Show twitter account started a #CancelColbert movement and brought hashtag activism to the mainstream. It trended, it got people’s attention, it crossed into pop culture, and Colbert addressed it on his show. So in that sense, it worked. But it did take away a larger point of the intended joke – Dan Snyder’s refusal to change the Washington Redskins name. Both topics – the nickname, and tweet – touched a nerve, and are undoubtedly important discussion points. But are we somehow missing a larger point? And Colbert, for all the troubles, was named the replacement for David Letterman on The Late Show.
You could say we had to start somewhere, and banning Sterling from the NBA is a message. Who knows, maybe that event coupled with the reactions, including Bomani’s article and radio appearance, becomes sort of tipping point to a deeper exploration. On the other hand, it is telling that it took a mistress, a video recorder, and TMZ to do what years of lawsuits and court rooms could never accomplish. Leaked audio recordings and hashtags brought down a billionaire owner. But there’s things that retweets can never bring back.

On Friday, April 25, Leonore Draper died in Chicago. I’ve known her almost 15 years and was in her wedding. For various reasons, each of us has thanked the other for saving our lives. This is what I offered in her memory at her memorial service in Houston. Just thought this was something some of you could take something from.
I talked to Connie last night for the first time since we lost Leonore, and she put it like only she could…
We all loved Leonore because she was crazy. You had no choice to love somebody that crazy.
She could say that because that’s her daughter. I can repeat it because…well, it was true.
When I met her, you could tell she needed some of that love. By the time she was done, she had so much love that she had enough to give even to people she’d never met.
She did what she wanted. She said what she wanted. She laughed if something was funny, even if the rest of us weren’t laughing. And before long, you’d be laughing yourself…even if you were the one everyone was laughing at.
And she sure was crazy about us. She was crazy about Jason, and the rest of us were crazy about him, because he was crazy enough to love her crazy forever.
She was crazy about Connie, Yolanda, Kiana and Khalin, and she’d give me an update on what they were doing every time I talked to her.
And she was crazy about her friends. Crazy enough to put my buddy George and I in her wedding. Crazy enough to let me lean on her when I didn’t want to lean on anyone, because she knew, even when we didn’t realize it, we were always leaning on each other.
And it’s crazy to think she’s gone.
In the last week, lots of people have asked me about Leonore because they were so impressed by what they read in the newspaper. The work she did to try to improve life in Chicago will forever make her a symbol of the work that’s left to do.
But she wasn’t a symbol to us. She was a human being, one far too complex to see as just one thing.
She was no saint, and she wasn’t perfect, but that’s what made her even more amazing and important.
While many will honor her and her work, we are here to remember her life. We knew her at her worst, and it’s what makes it so painful that we lost her at her best. And her best was her incredible ability to help make the rest of us better. Sometimes, we really weren’t trying to hear all that, but i can’t think of when i wasn’t better for listening.
I also can’t think of a time when I didn’t listen and she didn’t quickly remind me that I would have been better for listening.
But she helped when she could. She told us the truth when that’s all she could do. And she was there for us, no matter how it all turned out.
The last time I talked to Leonore, I told her “you sure are grown.” I admired her so much for that, for how reliable and responsible she was, and how comfortable she was being those things. She had become a woman that you couldn’t just count on. She knew we could count on her, and that allowed her to share with us so willingly.
I am proud when I think of the good that such a great friend did for others. I am glad others will be able to use her memory to keep helping others. I just wish all those people who think they knew Leonore had any idea how much more was there.
It wasn’t all pretty, but that made her more beautiful. It made her a shining example of what a wonderful person you can become when you don’t stop trying. The joy life can bring when you make it about more than yourself. The places you can go when you simply look at yourself and decide that you can do what you want, that you can do better, and you can bring others along with you.
I can say, proudly, that she helped bring me to where I am. And she will continue going great places with us from beyond. I just hope, one day, I can do the same for others that she did for us.
We love you, Leonore. We miss you. But we sure are glad we got to meet you, and all we can do is hope we meet again.