Billionaire s downfall goes against democratic norms

Jay Kuten Photo/File

Aside from the questionable nature of the comments - no pejorative terms or epithets and no stereotypical generalisations about blacks - these were remarks made in private.

MOST of us are susceptible on occasion to the entertainment of melodrama. You know, the straightforward type where you get to hiss and boo your contempt for the villain and feel good when he gets his comeuppance.

Such a morality play was recently on our TV and became the topic du jour for Americans when an 80-year-old billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team was caught out on a leaked tape of his private conversation with his 31-year-old girlfriend. The young woman, V Stiviano, aka Vanessa Perez, whose arresting charms captured the elderly Donald Sterling's imagination to the gifted tunes of two Bentleys, one Ferrari and a $1.8 million condo, denies leaking the tape.

The leaked tape contains a quarrel between Sterling (pictured) and the young woman that was apparently sparked by his displeasure with Stiviano posting pictures of herself online with basketball great Magic Johnson and Dodgers baseball outfielder Matt Kemp, both African-Americans.

In the recording at the centre of the scandal, the man purported to be Sterling tells the woman she "can sleep with" black people but should not "promote" it publicly. "You can sleep with blacks. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it ... and not to bring them to my games," the man says.

The response of National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver was swift and draconian. He banned Sterling for life from the NBA games, fined him US$2.5 million and applied pressure to force Sterling to sell his team.

What's wrong with this picture? Aside from the questionable nature of the comments - no pejorative terms or epithets and no stereotypical generalisations about blacks - these were remarks made in private.

You don't have to defend Donald Sterling's purported racism or his ownership interests in the Clippers to find something amiss here. Sterling's expensive lawyers will take care of the latter. As to the racist comments, well, that's a horse of a different colour. The comments took place in a private conversation. That should have been the end of the story. Leaving aside the issue of probable criminality in a tape recording made public without Sterling's consent, the notion that comments made in private can become the basis for very public punishment is anathema to any notion of democracy and of fair play. It also sets a very dangerous precedent.

The heaviest of ironies are in attendance in that that the campaigns for civil rights of the last 60 years, the marches and the legal decisions had as their goal not equality of identity but equality of opportunity. In other words: fair play.

Americans of all colours overwhelmingly cheered Sterling's punishment. At the same time many people have been aghast that the NSA was collecting all their private phone and internet data. They have protested the activities of media companies like Facebook collecting personal information for commercial purposes. And some critics would argue that the right of a citizen to enjoyment of her privacy is the fundamental right summed up in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

As to Sterling's punishment, even a bigot is entitled to the natural justice of due process.

While this quickly ordered ban for life will be defended on grounds the NBA is a private organisation, there exists in law on the view that a person should be able to testify and defend himself before any sentence is passed and executed. The opposite case, one of rough justice, administered arbitrarily, was once called lynching.

This sorry spectacle of an old man's coming unglued through his jealousy of a younger innamorata and his punishment has excited Americans more than the disasters in Korea or the troubles in Ukraine. Their twitter responses for the Sterling affair are at least 10 times that of any other recent event.

Those applauding this "villain's" downfall might do better to realise that this was a not a great day for civil rights in America.

Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.