Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Donald Sterl-mancipation

So I guess I'm supposed to be happy that Donald Sterling got a lifetime ban from the NBA.  Yeah, that's fantastic, considering that his days on this earth are probably in the single digits, anyway.  It's a lifetime ban for a person without much life left.  And he still owns the team, so all Adam Silver really did was tell him he can't come to the stadium.  When you buy Clippers merch or tix, you're still putting money in his pocket. And speaking of money, on a percentage basis, the amount that he got fined is about the same as you being fined around $20. 

Yeah, we got a huge win today.

But during a few checks on social media when I was supposed to be working, I see y'all out here acting like we just got emancipated.  Like it was the OJ verdict all over again.  And I gotta ask, what are you so happy about?

Now, I'm not one of these people who's gonna try to ruin your good mood by saying that there are more important things to be concerned with.  Those people are assholes, because of course there's always something to be more concerned with. It's just that there hasn't been much change on the Keystone XL Pipeline and Congress still isn't passing any bills.  And since The Walking Dead still hasn't come back, we're pretty starved for excitement.

No, I'm going to ruin your good mood by telling you that this is nothing to be happy about, because Donald Sterling didn't get banned because he's a racist.  Donald Sterling got banned because it became big news that he was a racist. 

Donald Sterling was a racist a long time before now, and there were a whole lot of incidents that he was involved in that were reported on and promptly ignored.  The only difference between this one and all of those was how you found out about it.  The other ones came out through lawsuits and court depositions and OH MY GOD THIS IS SO BORINGZZZZZZZZZZZZ. This one came out because his jump off (I refuse to call her anything else) goaded him into talking about black people so she could record it and leak it to TMZ.  Already, this story is more sexy.  Certainly, sexier than she is.  She looks like she used to be a man. 

All of a sudden, Donald Sterling is an embarrassment and needs to be removed, but wasn't he just as embarrassing, if not more so back in 2009, when he paid out the largest settlement on housing discrimination lawsuit ever?  Or what about those sexual harassment suits?  His callous nature when it came to evicting tenants?  The time that he made his wife pose as a government worker and visit the residents of his buildings to find out what race they were, so he could evict them?  Refusing to rent to Blacks or Latinos at all?  Donald Sterling has been a horrible piece of shit racist for a long time.  So really, it should insult all of you that this is what it took to bring him down. 

You mean to tell me that the NBA didn't know about any of this?  And that his racist views expressed in a private conversation is worse than the stuff listed above that the NBA certainly knows about?  The NBA doesn't care that Donald Sterling is racist.  The NBA cares that you know he's racist.  If this was about his racism, they would have banned him in 1983 when he asked Rollie Massamino, "I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers."

The truth is, if Donald Sterling's jump off was a woman of a higher character, you wouldn't know anything that he said and they wouldn't have done anything.  Period.  Despite the fact that he's continued to make himself rich by denying living space to minorities.  Despite the fact that he's sexually harassed women in his employ.  Adam Silver can get in front of reporters and make his dramatic statements, but the truth is, it wasn't a problem for them before.  It only became a problem when it became public.

And the same goes for all of these sponsors who cut ties with the Clippers.  If y'all don't stop acting like you have morals.  Every one of you is a conglomerate of corrupt pieces of shit.  Every one of you knew who Sterling was and chose to sign deals with him anyway, because OOH LOOGIT BLAKE GRIFFIN JUMPS HIGH.  And now that everyone knows that he's a bigot, you don't want your brand associated with him.  Good thing those lawsuits got swept under the rug, otherwise, you would have been forced to leave all that money on the table.  So CarMax, State Farm, Kia, Corona, AQUAhydrate. Red Bull, Sprint, Lumber Liquidators,  LoanMart, Yokohama Tires, Samsung, Mercedes-Benz, and Virgin America, you ain't shit.  Not a single one of you.

So don't get too excited about all of this.  All that happened is that they reminded you what their real priorities are.  No progress has been made.  Unless you're Donald Sterling's jump off.  She's about to come up when she gets that spot on Basketball Wives.

Friday, April 04, 2014

I totally get your Kardashian anger, Vogue readers.

Some people wonder why you wasted all that time being upset about Kim Kardashian on the Vogue cover.  "She's just getting her money and not hurting anyone." Someone probably told you to stop hating, because they have no idea how to form a legitimate argument.  But I understand, Vogue readers.  That's right, Thad Ochocinco, sporadic blogger who knows nothing about anything outside of sports or comic books, feels your pain. 

To sum it all up, It's worlds colliding, except no one asked or wanted them to. 

See, on some level, people read shit like Vogue so they don't have to deal with lowbrow shit like the Kardashians.  It's supposed to be a safe space away from all of that.  People who like the Kardashians have the E! Network, where they can have all of the Kardashians and Chelsea Handler and Joan Rivers that they can handle.  The rest of us program our cable boxes to skip over the E! Network, because ignorance of what is on that channel is bliss.  "You keep that over there, and I'll stay over here."  "I don't bother you and you don't bother me."  It was like a storefront church in the middle of a red light district, except that in this metaphor, the Kardashians are actually the church and the red light district is the rest of the free world.  You know, come to think of it, maybe this metaphor doesn't work.

But to stick with it, say the church starts venturing out to convert the people.  Now, my ambisexual S&M Massage parlor isn't hurting anyone, but here comes this nun, trying to save souls, which kills my business.  She's making people think that there's something wrong with the sexual gratification of a massage while being whipped by a person of an unidentifiable sex.  But we had an understanding:  You keep inside the church, and I won't have your building firebombed by the mob underboss who controls this neighborhood.  Basically, this metaphor can also double as the pitch for Quentin Tarantino's Sister Act.

That's what's happening here.  Kim Kardashian is invading what was supposed to be a Kardashian-free zone, and we all deserve one of those, because without it, we're likely to devolve into whatever we call people from Tennessee.  She's breaking the terms of the agreement, and a lot of people are upset.  True, it wasn't her decision (the editor of Vogue said this would never happen, then magazine sales got low), but Vogue readers didn't want this.  Vogue readers (I guess, because I don't know any) believe that they're too high class to watch a show about two sisters smelling each other's vagina sweat (this actually happened on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians").  When the bar is that low, I'm not gonna say that they're wrong for feeling that way.

Usually, when worlds collide, something good comes out of it, like when the Justice League fought the Avengers, when Larry Bird played against Magic Johnson, when Spider-Man started selling Twinkies in the 1970s.  That was both adventurous and delicious.  This is more like what happened to Ashlee Simpson at the Orange Bowl.  Or when RoboCop showed up on WCW Capital Combat.   Yeah, worlds were colliding, but in the same way that the world of sports cars sometimes collide with the world of the underside of a truck.  There was symbolic blood everywhere that night, and it was in the form of Sting's expression when he realized that he was actually standing in front of people pretending to be saved by RoboCop.

So I understand the anger of Vogue readers, and you should, too.  For all everyone's talk of "She's just doing her thing, let her make her money," or whatever stupid shit people say to make it appear like they're above it all, you know you'd be pissed if someone tried to feature her useless ass in three episodes of The Walking Dead.