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Stasi: Rich, famous racists tend to get off light
Last week was a big one for racists and the women who love them.
Immediately upon discovering the racist rants not just by Clippers owner Donald Sterling, but also by populist rancher Cliven Bundy and TV star Jeremy Clarkson, the media went berserkers predicting their collective timely demises.
The NBA even went so far as to ban the badly tarnished Sterling for life and to demand that he sell the team.
Really? Not so fast.
When old white guys — especially rich and famous old white guys — hurl racial slurs and behave in the most heinously bigoted ways, they usually don’t lose it all — or any of it, actually.
Remember the horror and outrage a few months ago when swamp-dwelling “Duck Die-Nasty” bazillionaire Phil Robertson endorsed pedophilia (“marry girls when they’re 15”), homophobia, (“insolent, arrogant, God-haters”) and racism (“I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash”)? He lost, well, nothing but two weeks of work at A&E.
The same can’t be said for old (or young) rich white women, not that very many racist women have been outed — yet.
Rich ol’ white woman Paula Deen, for example, got broiled, baked and fired not just by the Food Network, but by her marketing partners and the media after a disgruntled ex-employee sued her in a racial discrimination case.
Nobody bothered to care (except the judge who threw the discrimination case out) that the racially violated employee was a white woman Deen had fired for being a lazy ***. Yes, Deen is now in talks for a TV revival with a deep-pocketed investor, but that TV revival remains to be seen. Meantime, she’s doing penance by attempting a different revival of sorts — embarking on a traveling modern-day, food revival show. Hail cheeses!
Will this week’s racist guys meet the same fate? Doubtful.
The Clippers owner — the tarnished Sterling whose two-dollar girlfriend, V. (for visor?) Stiviano, gave (she denies it) his racist phone conversations to TMZ — probably won’t lose the team (it’s in a family trust for one thing, and the NBA probably doesn’t have the legal rights for another), or his money (he paid $12.5 million, and it’s now worth half a billion). Sterling is safe — unless of course Mistress V. actually fulfills her lifelong dream and becomes President of the United States. Then he’s toast.
Back on the ranch, populist/Fox favorite, federal land-defiant rancher Cliven Bundy, who shocked everyone when he morphed into Al Bundy by declaring that blacks were better off as slaves, might have lost the public relations war, but that has nothing to do with this anti-hero’s relations with his adoring public.
Finally, Jeremy Clarkson, star of BBC’s “Top Gear,” used the N-word while reciting the children’s rhyme, “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” on camera. He now says he did “everything in his power to not use that word.” What?
Don’t worry about Jeremy. He was vindicated by none other than Britain’s education secretary, who declared that Clarkson should not lose his job. What kind of nursery rhymes are they teaching over there?
Last week was a big one for racists and the women who love them.
Immediately upon discovering the racist rants not just by Clippers owner Donald Sterling, but also by populist rancher Cliven Bundy and TV star Jeremy Clarkson, the media went berserkers predicting their collective timely demises.
The NBA even went so far as to ban the badly tarnished Sterling for life and to demand that he sell the team.
Really? Not so fast.
When old white guys — especially rich and famous old white guys — hurl racial slurs and behave in the most heinously bigoted ways, they usually don’t lose it all — or any of it, actually.
Remember the horror and outrage a few months ago when swamp-dwelling “Duck Die-Nasty” bazillionaire Phil Robertson endorsed pedophilia (“marry girls when they’re 15”), homophobia, (“insolent, arrogant, God-haters”) and racism (“I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash”)? He lost, well, nothing but two weeks of work at A&E.
The same can’t be said for old (or young) rich white women, not that very many racist women have been outed — yet.
Rich ol’ white woman Paula Deen, for example, got broiled, baked and fired not just by the Food Network, but by her marketing partners and the media after a disgruntled ex-employee sued her in a racial discrimination case.
Nobody bothered to care (except the judge who threw the discrimination case out) that the racially violated employee was a white woman Deen had fired for being a lazy ***. Yes, Deen is now in talks for a TV revival with a deep-pocketed investor, but that TV revival remains to be seen. Meantime, she’s doing penance by attempting a different revival of sorts — embarking on a traveling modern-day, food revival show. Hail cheeses!
Will this week’s racist guys meet the same fate? Doubtful.
The Clippers owner — the tarnished Sterling whose two-dollar girlfriend, V. (for visor?) Stiviano, gave (she denies it) his racist phone conversations to TMZ — probably won’t lose the team (it’s in a family trust for one thing, and the NBA probably doesn’t have the legal rights for another), or his money (he paid $12.5 million, and it’s now worth half a billion). Sterling is safe — unless of course Mistress V. actually fulfills her lifelong dream and becomes President of the United States. Then he’s toast.
Back on the ranch, populist/Fox favorite, federal land-defiant rancher Cliven Bundy, who shocked everyone when he morphed into Al Bundy by declaring that blacks were better off as slaves, might have lost the public relations war, but that has nothing to do with this anti-hero’s relations with his adoring public.
Finally, Jeremy Clarkson, star of BBC’s “Top Gear,” used the N-word while reciting the children’s rhyme, “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” on camera. He now says he did “everything in his power to not use that word.” What?
Don’t worry about Jeremy. He was vindicated by none other than Britain’s education secretary, who declared that Clarkson should not lose his job. What kind of nursery rhymes are they teaching over there?
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