As IF Times

Link Mark Cuban: Donald Sterling’s Comments ‘Abhorrent’ « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth.

Somehow, intemperate comments made in private by Donald Sterling has managed to usurp all other issues ailing the world and is the primary focus for all mainstream news.  His ‘abhorrent’ behavior has given news outlets respite from reporting on abstract things such as the Benghazi scandal or war in the Ukraine.  He’s even managed to push the remarkable Kim Kardashian off the front page of America’s news outlets.  What we are witnessing is nothing less than the most public lynching of an individual since Paula Deen.

Sterling’s history of behavior is not exactly the sort that would befit a NAACP achievement award, as that organization embarrassingly found out.  In the aftermath of the accusations, people who were once proudly associated with Sterling (or his money) disappeared with a ping and a swirl of dust, like the Roadrunner in a Wile E Coyote cartoon.

Apparently, the revelation that Sterling may hold some antipathy towards elements of the black community was a shock to people on the looney left but also to those on the newly sanctimonious right.  His comments were not made in a public speech or in an open forum.  They were uttered in private and we don’t even know the circumstances.  Oddly, someone (the offended gal pal) just happened to have a camera rolling. Maybe she was insisting that ebonics was a language.  The resultant firestorm was powerful and it was immediate.  The chorus of tsk tsking from all quarters was like the drone of cicadas on a summer’s evening in the Midwest.   Sterling became an instant pariah.   It’s hard to feel any pity for the guy, since as the old saying goes, if you lie with dogs, you’re going to get fleas.

What we should all feel pity for, if not absolute outrage, is the blatant assault on something infinitely more sacred and which is rapidly disappearing from our society: that is, privacy.  Even fellow NBA team owner Mark Cuban, noted foot in mouth guy,  recognizes that the circumstances that led to the public lynching of Sterling are the beginnings of a very slippery slope for privacy.  When you couple the fact that most everyone has a cellphone capable of recording any conversation and that many topics these days are strictly off limits as determined by the PC police, the opportunities for future extortion and character assassination are now objects of lawyers’ wet dreams.

As it is, every owner of any professional team is now on notice that they too can be brought before the PC kangaroo court and be stripped of their teams and their reputations if an offhand remark offends any of the exhaustive list of aggrieved members of society.  That’s not a small thing.  Imagine that anyone can be stripped of a multi-million dollar enterprise just because somebody doesn’t like what they said…in private.   That’s essentially state sponsored confiscation…or outright theft.  We can bet that this wouldn’t stop with owners of sports teams.  This policy will affect anyone who runs a large entity, holds public office, anyone who can be gainfully extorted.

It’s amusing that for all of the rhetoric about due process and free markets, the fortunes of Sterling’s ball team is not decided by the wallets of the public, but by a kangaroo court of sanctimonious sycophants.  Naturally, ‘appropriate’ buyers are already in the wings willing to take over the successful operation.  This is huge shot across the bow for American society.  The rule of law is giving way to tribal rule.  With these kinds of stakes at risk, you can be sure that an entire wave of rude hand gestures will emerge in place of verbal insults.  If anyone gets called on it, they can always claim they were misunderstood.

link Fans support, defend Paula Deen.

So the knives are out for Paula Deen.  After almost a lifetime of promoting a diet that would give an elephant diabetes, she is felled by her use of a common racial epithet…some years ago.   For those who don’t know who Paula Deen is, she is the doyenne of down south American cuisine, where the staple ingredients are buckets of butter and slabs of bacon.  And that’s for the kid’s meals.  She is to butter and bacon what Emeril Lagasse is to pork fat.  Much of her cooking caters to the theme of “if it ain’t fried, it ain’t cooked”.  Ironically, it’s something that came out of her mouth, not what she put into it that gets her in trouble.

It’s actually amazing that up to now, no diet group has come around to denounce her cooking repertoire since she is essentially pushing crack cocaine to fat people.  It’s no argument that, notwithstanding any culinary benefit, she probably did more damage to people with her recipes than with any racial slur cast over the years. This is a twist on the old refrain of “you can call me anything you want, but don’t call me late for dinner”.  So she gets taken down not by the health police, but by the speech police.

It’s quizzical to witness just how quickly the media have circled like vultures to peck on the still warm body of Ms. Deen, served up with a whole mess o’ righteous hypocrisy.   It’s as if her admitted transgression is the most egregious issue facing people today, a crime worse than terrorist bombers, child kidnappers, global warming and IRS bullying.   The Food Network even cancelled her show’s renewal.  While there’s little evidence of malicious intent on her past utterances, nevertheless, she is now held to the standards of the day by virtue of her fame.

If poor Paula has fallen victim to the modern world of PC speech and sensibilities, then it’s a fair bet that everyone with a public persona should be worried.  We can literally hear the din of phones ringing at lawyers’ offices nationwide as opportunistic people from the pasts of present day celebrities rush to file grievances for some perceived slight 30 odd years ago.

Wop, Dago, Chink, Jew, Mick, Spic, garlic eater, Limey, Gook, Chief, Kraut, Polack and Frog are a partial list of verboten words that if ever were revealed to have been uttered by anyone famous, should also be career enders.   But it’s potentially worse that that however.  With the inexorable march of politically correct sensitivity, a big chunk of the language will likely achieve scarlet letter status, so that even the most lame pejorative epithets will arouse horror among civilized people.  No more calling people: four eyes, dufus, stupido, fatso, gimpy, wimpy, shorty, stretch, goof, or even slowpoke.

Unless of course, you happen to be a member of the mentioned groups.  So for instance, it’s perfectly ok for a homosexual to call another a fag.  Or two dumb people to call each other out, as in “I’m not stupid, you’re stupid!”

There may be a bright side to this made for TV controversy.   It may bring on the age of creative and oblique epithets.  Instead of the most commonly hurled basic insult you hear these days, perhaps referring to someone as a butt sphincter may be more creative.   Instead of idiot, you can refer to someone as “thick as manure and half as useful”.

Doing a very quick search of the web turns up some pretty artful ones:

bawdy, bat-fowling baggage
beslubbering, beef-witted barnacle
bootless, beetle-headed bladder
churlish, boil-brained boar-pig
cockered, clapper-clawed bugbear
clouted, clay-brained bum-bailey
craven, common-kissing canker-blossom
currish, crook-pated clack-dish
dankish, dismal-dreaming clotpole
dissembling, dizzy-eyed coxcomb
droning, doghearted codpiece
errant, dread-bolted death-token
fawning, earth-vexing dewberry
fobbing, elf-skinned flap-dragon
froward, fat-kidneyed flax-wench
frothy, fen-sucked flirt-gill
gleeking, flap-mouthed foot-licker
goatish, fly-bitten fustilarian
gorbellied, folly-fallen giglet
impertinent, fool-born gudgeon
infectious, full-gorged haggard
jarring, guts-griping harpy
loggerheaded, half-faced hedge-pig
lumpish, hasty-witted horn-beast
mammering , hedge-born hugger-mugger
mangled, hell-hated joithead
mewling, idle-headed lewdster
paunchy,  ill-breeding lout
pribbling, ill-nurtured maggot-pie

Of course for those of you unable to bring wit to the discussion, you can always fall back on “am not!”