http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/donald-sterling-brendan-eich-and-how-homophobia-gets-a-pass_b_5239389.html

And yet, gays were vilified for supposedly having destroyed Eich’s career — again, when no LGBT groups or gay pundits actually called for him to resign — while most people, including some of those who defended Eich, seem fine with Donald Sterling’s demise and the sanctions by the NBA.

Wheels within wheels…

The movement to dump Sterling was not masterminded by some pinko lefty Hollywood media gang, nor did it originate in the councils of Big Government Bureaucracy. This coup d’etat was carried out with the direct approval, if not deliberately engineered, by his peers; his fellow owners and the hierarchy of Daddy Warbucks types who play at team ownership and league servicing the way you and I play sandlot softball.

Sterling’s actions were making it hard on his fellow owners, he was pissing in the communal soup, killing the goose with the golden eggs, and the other guests at the feast are only protecting their financial interest from the consequences of his public bigotry. When talk of strike and boycott started surfacing, and the players started getting really pissed, too many heavy hitters felt threatened. Either they seized on the PC angle to justify a purely business move, or, as JEKing suggests below, the whole affair was set in motion to lubricate some long-planned clandestine behind-the-scenes business transaction.

Remember, Magna Carta did nothing for the peasants. It was purely boardroom politics–a bourgeois revolution.

In a somewhat similar vein, I think Brendan Eich got unfairly shafted for having an opinion and expressing his freedom to support a legal organization. I strongly disagree with said opinion and organization…but so what? I’m free to voice opposing views and to support groups of my choice, with very little chance of being forced from my job for doing so.

Sometimes, organized political correctness has a truly unfair and highly personal impact. A personal expression of disapproval, or an individual’s decision to stop doing business with any particular group is one thing, but an organized effort to punish someone because of an opinion or a belief, however distasteful you may find it, is something entirely different.

When sponsors started dropping the Clippers and talk of boycott and strike started going around, enormous pressures developed to get rid of Sterling–ASAP. Its a classic example of economic power in action; you don’t need smoke-filled board rooms or shadowy committees of bigwigs pulling strings in the background. The man had to go because he threatened the stability of the whole system. Due process, property rights, social responsibility, overreaching big government intervention, nothing played a role here except he threatened the System. The spice must flow. For all we know, as JEKing suggests below, this was all a corporate maneuver to force him to sell something he did not want to sell.

It was particularly easy to swallow because Sterling was such a distasteful figure, everybody got to feel moral and virtuous about it, but the fact remains: Sterling fairly negotiated top salaries with his players, he broke no laws, and created no environmental or social pollution. He now has to sell a business he built up from 15 to 700G$, perhaps at a loss, simply because he is an asshole.

I still have a very bad feeling about this.

The weirdest one I heard was some minor ESPN white guy sportscaster who suggested that the clipper players should not show up for the next game on the day that the most damning recording showed up. When they showed up anyway he announced that they had lost his respect for not taking his advice.

Obviously most blacks rightfully despise Sterling for what he said, but who are these cracker talking heads, to tell the offended parties how to react? And, to say respect was lost? Amazing!

The best comment I have heard is that old guys like Sterling should just die. Old guys like Sterling and me are different in the way we think and only death will end it.

I don’t consider myself a racist and I doubt that Sterling does. He hired the first black coach in the NBA, contributes to black charities and has a mixed race girlfriend. This has been painted as a plantation thing and no doubt it is, but the fact is, those of us who came up in the 50s and 60s are wired different when compared to the 80s and 90s generations. For the older generation acceptance of racial equality is based on rational thought and morality prevailing over how we were nurtured, and not that it is a natural thing. We lived too long when it was not.

It’s where Google led me when I entered your name, a published economist at Latrobe University, Bundoora, Australia. It seemed to fit in with your interests and style: an economically literate academic from a civilized country.

I don’t recall seeing your byline before. Are you a newcomer, an old-timer? Either way, welcome aboard, and keep those cards and letters coming in.

And while we’re swapping pop-culcha camouflage conspiracies here’s a few new ones for ya.

1)Chelsea’s pregnancy was planned so it would have a maximum beneficial effect on her mom’s candidacy.

2) The disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website was faked, deliberately engineered ahead of time so that the Republicans would commit enormous resources to fighting it, and so come across as total idiots before the Mid-term Elections.

3)And my favorite, an old family legend from my childhood: when Dale Evans died unexpectedly, Roy Rogers buried her without ceremony, and married her twin sister so he wouldn’t have to break up the act.

I love the allergenic response metaphor, too.

You seem to be quite familiar with American sports, culture and business for an Aussie. Or have I mistaken you for someone else?

Set aside the personal faults of Sterling.

PC negative memes are like pollens. If diffused in the media like atomized droplets, they produce a useful broad immune response in the ranks of pop culture junkies. While everyone is busy sneezing and wheezing the big business deal is facilitated.