Was Sterling's punishment too harsh?
Let's see ..
.. He, a man of reputable questionable social ethics, made a statement he clearly expected to be made in confidence, whereby he revealed what was unquestionably a character-defect insecurity of his to an arguably expected confidant, albeit the confidant, Stiviano, being of dubious character and in definite recent conflict of interest (owing to the fact that Sterling's estranged wife was suing her for attempting to bilk Sterling of "the family money", such bilking attempts being an apparent scamming history of Stiviano's), that, despite his rather sizable ego, especially for and 80-year-old man, the insecurity he was communicating to Stiviano was that he was actually sexually intimidated by African American athletes, likely owing to both his age and his NBA inside knowledge of the Black NBA athlete culture of having a booty-call woman in various NBA cities enjoyed when on the road, a culture every NBA insider knows exists (how Magic Johnson acquired HIV, despite being married at the time), something about which Stiviano also certainly knows, being an NBA insider herself of a short-term and limited (perhaps even sexual) degree, and who, having been Sterling's 31-year-old girlfriend and aware of his insecurities revealed during pillow talk, was perhaps engaging in knowledgeable and premeditated intentional baiting of Sterling into his insecurities-based comment that he made, so that she, no longer, thanks to the lawsuit, having legal free access to "gifts" from the Sterling fortune, such as her 1.8 million-dollar home, half-a-million in cars, a few hundred thou in spending money (making her really perhaps just a "high-class" hooker), was simply planning to use Sterling to vengefully get back at the estranged wife who's suing her and cutting off her sugar-daddy funds, exposing his understandable and baited response to the world via unconscionable betrayal to TMZ, thinking that the "nuke" punishment fallout that would most certainly ensue as a result would, in "I'll teach you!" fashion, hurt everyone: the estranged wife, Sterling, Sterling's Clippers, all those associated with the NBA, including the fans, the playoffs, everything and everyone in the vicinity of her detonation .. but her.
(Wow -- I'm out of breath!)
So, is his punishment for trusting a clearly untrustworthy person with the same kind of confiding revealing his defects of character, the kind of confiding of one's deeper insecurities that one might hear in a therapist's office or a 12-step meeting or in any bedroom between lovers that just about every one of us has at one time or another expressed in some form owing in origin to the fact that just about every one of us was exposed to character-defect-creating dysfunction in our family-of-origin, and that, in this case, less likely reveals bigotry but reflects an insider's insecurities stemming from his knowledge of an inside reality that most insiders want to keep quiet, too harsh?
Well, beats me. Maybe, it is. And, maybe it isn't.
But, what I do experience as obviously apparent, is that ..
.. Stiviano is pretty scummy, and I would be happy if she was banned for life from the NBA ..
.. Sterling's ego is so large .. and fragile .. that he might have never given it much thought about how untrustworthy Stiviano clearly was ..
.. There's a lot of reality implied in the fact-based reason why Sterling was sexually intimidated by Black NBA athletes, a lot of NBA culture reality that many in the NBA would rather have kept quiet, resulting in a ton of insider feigned moral outrage, in the hope that Sterling goes away, and his implied reminder goes with him ..
.. And, of course, there's politics, politics, politics all over this one, so with all the agendas flying, who can be trusted to be telling their "moral" truth about how "outraged" they really are, and, about what.
For me, the moral of the story is clearly that if you want to trust someone with your insecurities, make darn sure it's someone who's trustworthy, if you can, ..
.. And, if you go to a 12-Step meeting, insist that everyone turn off their cell phones when the meeting begins ..
.. And make sure anyone you sleep with signs a contract that they will not reveal anything said "in bed" to anyone else.
(What a sad, sad mess all the way around!)
The price of broken trust is huge in this electronic gadget day and age, sadly reminding everyone that there is a degree of value in keeping their insecurities to themselves, no matter how emotionally isolating and unhealthy that may be.
(What a world, what a world!)
