Two Aspects to the Donald Sterling Controversy

The controversy surrounding the racist comments of the National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has dominated the sports (and news) headlines during the last few days.  New NBA commissioner Adam Silver yesterday banned him from the league for life, as well as fining him $2.5 million and setting into motion the process that would eventually lead to him selling his team.  Sterling's comments were atrocious...there is no argument about that.  He had to go because the brand name of the NBA and its reputation was at stake.  Apparently, this guy had a low opinion of blacks and of associating socially with them: so why did he buy an NBA team?  Probably, I'm guessing, to make a big profit (which he did) and to look like a bigshot in the media (which he also did).  After Silver's announcement, there was a long procession of people reacting with praise for his strong actions against Sterling.  And I understand how Silver needed to protect the league.  But there's one important element largely missing from this discussion, an element that I only heard brought up on Fox News Channel (on Megyn Kelly, not Bill O'Reilly)...

The comments attributed to Donald Sterling that got him into so much hot water were all part of a PRIVATE phone conversation he had with his girlfriend, who very well may have illegally recorded it (violation of California state law) without his permission and then released it.  Sterling had neither said nor written anything of the kind for public consumption: this wasn't one of those gaffes you hear about from time to time coming out of the ignorant mouths of public figures.  No, this was an INVASION OF PRIVACY!  A commentator on CNN today said that the girlfriend claimed that Sterling had given her permission to make the recording...and that may well have happened...but in the absence of any tangible proof supporting that claim or of Sterling's own confirmation thereof, the burden is on her to prove her claim.  After all, anyone can violate someone else's privacy and then claim the other's spoken permission...

Think about it: are any of us immune to saying things about others that don't reflect well on us?  Don't we believe that we should be protected from having our private discussions made public without our permission?  Sterling is reputed to have $2 billion to his credit and isn't likely to be financially ruined...not by a longshot.  But for the rest of us, having personal, private information illegally leaked to the public could well cause financial ruin for ourselves as well as make it difficult to recover after the public scrutiny and humiliation. I'm thinking of all of the celebrities who lined up to condemn Sterling and laud Silver's harsh judgment and wonder how many of them, if not all, have said things in private that, were they publicized, would have ruined them as well.  Think about it, and then ask yourself why the invasion of Donald Sterling's privacy is receiving such a relative lack of media attention...