In 1996, Major League Baseball banned Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott because of racist comments.  Before an owners’ conference call she grumbled, “I would never hire another nigger.  I’d rather have a trained monkey working for me than a nigger.”  Soon thereafter, she publically opined that Adolf Hitler “was good in the beginning…”  To this observer, the private comments made by Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling to his mistress – “Yeah, it bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people.” – are far less offensive.  Sterling, unlike most rap artists, did not utilize the n-word, when he decreed, “don’t bring black people [to my games].

But we live in a new era (the entire saga was germinated on Instagram and fertilized by social media), one in which the racial caricatures populating Cheech and Chong’s “Basketball Jones” video would not be tolerated.  Unless, of course, they were conjured by Key and Peele.  But no matter, because in the end, Sterling’s past indiscretions, including two lawsuits settled over housing discrimination, suddenly made the NBA dyspeptic.   This is a league, remember, that expressed no judgment whatsoever five years ago when ESPN reported that Sterling complained his Ardmore apartment complex was malodorous “because of all the blacks… they smell, they’re not clean.  And it’s because of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day.”

If league owners vote to force Sterling to sell his franchise (which I am not convinced they will do under secret ballot) he would circumvent the 30% state and federal taxes applicable to the rest of Californians.  Section 1033 of the tax code allows owners of condemned or “involuntary converted” property to enter into a tax-free exchange for a new investment.  Given that both the Sacramento Kings and Milwaukee Bucks (two small-market losers) recently traded north of $500 million, the potential surfeit to Mr. Sterling’s empire is substantial.  Mrs. Schott, in retrospect, could have saved a bundle by eliciting a forced deaccession rather than selling under her own volition, but, hey, that’s the difference between a clumsy Kraut and a slippery Jew.

While it would be racist to say that Jews possess differentiating attributes based on genetics, it might be fair to say that a long history of persecution (see: Masada, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust) has selected for the crafty and hyper-vigilant.  So it was on the eve of Passover when former KKK leader and professed anti-Semite Frazier Glenn Cross gunned down a teenager and his grandfather outside a Kansas City Jewish community center, and a woman at a nearby Jewish retirement home, that the victims turned out to be two Methodists and a Catholic.  Upon discovering the old switcheroo, Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK told USA Today, “I definitely condemn what happened.”  By way of contrast, not one of the six Mormon newborns strangled by Megan Huntsman in her suburban Salt Lake City home between 1996 and 2006 attempted evasive maneuvers or even donned a disguise before their mother could seal them in plastic bags and store them the garage.  So who knows, a few thousand more episodes like this and we may find, several generations from now, a plethora of Utahans that can slip the both taxman and the Angel of Death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having turned himself into the LAPD, former NFL star and TV analyst Darren Sharper faces multiple charges of rape in both California and New Orleans.  And despite additional accusations of sexual assault in Arizona, Nevada and Florida, Sharper’s attorney unflinchingly averred,  “It was all consensual contact with women who wanted to be in his company.”  I’m no Clarence Darrow, but perhaps a more exculpatory strategy would be to modify the Twinkie defense and argue diminished capacity as a result of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  The effects of brain trauma on NFL players have already been well established: U.S. District Judge Anita Brody recently denied preliminary approval of the league’s $765 million settlement of a concussion lawsuit due to concerns the compensation package may prove insufficient.  Yet to this observer, whether Sharper’s partners were, in the final moment, acting under their own volition seems wholly beside the point.  The bottom line is this: while athletes and entertainers get copious amounts of pussy, the rest of us shlubs have to jerk off to Internet porn or, if we’re really lucky, a whiff of the housekeeper’s panties we fished out of the hamper.

As Charlie Sheen is getting engaged to a porn star, most Average Joes are reduced to debasing themselves.   To wit:  Timothy Margis, Concordia University’s director of public safety, was fired after a female employee told police he masturbated in her office and ejaculated into one of her shoes.  River Forest Police Department Deputy Chief James O’Shea said Margis, who was charged with public indecency and disorderly conduct, admitted to the act after learning witnesses observed him exiting her office while buttoning his pants and fastening his belt.  Another exemplar is 34-year-old Vincent J. Wade of Pennsauken, N.J.  Wade held visions of fondling some breasts and burying his face between succulent thighs when he crashed his 2007 Toyota Camry into a Philadelphia area Crown Fried Chicken restaurant.   Video captured at the scene shows Wade subsequently exited the vehicle, tore off all his clothes and began choking his own chicken in front of onlookers.  The shift manager reported that damage to the building was minimal and that, unlike the prep-sink-as-urinal Pizza Hut in Kermit, W. Va., his franchise would remain open for business.

Inexplicably, the vast majority of American men seem satisfied by this arrangement.  But sadly there are deranged predators who seek pleasure at the expense of innocent children.   Just check the FBI’s sex offender database and you’ll probably discover several right in your neighborhood.   Take for example Curtis Anton Beseda, caught on surveillance cameras groping an 11-year-old girl in a Snohomish, Washington grocery store.  It turns out that Beseda was a hero of the Christian Right, having served 12 years for fire-bombing abortion clinics in the ‘80s.  Beseda, to my mind, was driven far more by self-interest than God’s will.  Simple logic dictates that fewer abortion clinics mean fewer abortions.  Fewer abortions equal more children and, well, you can figure out the rest.

On the precipice of the Oscars, Woody Allen is newsworthy for predation, rather than artistry.   His adoptive daughter, Dylan, has rehashed, twenty years later, allegations of molestation.  Woody’s published response in the New York Times was both trenchant and highly persuasive, and served to reinforce the widely held notion that Mia Farrow is, if nothing else, a complete loon.   Nonetheless, Mr. Allen must recognize that his public persona was forever soiled when he married another of Ms. Farrow’s adopted daughters, Soon-Yi.  The benefit of hindsight aside, if he had wanted a young Asian bride, he could have easily ordered one from Singapore or the Philippines.  At the end of the day, it would cost but a fraction of Mr. Sharper’s legal bills.

 

 

In my last diatribe, I bitched that the NFL was legislating contact out of the sport and turning it into some kind of tortured, steroid-laced ballet.  In an effort to restore some badly needed testosterone to the game, I have been Tweeting ex-defensive tackle and Fox TV analyst Tony Siragusa to ditch the Depends undergards and man up with a Stadium Pal.  Meanwhile, current defensive players, afraid of penalties and fines associated with concussion-inducing blows to the head, are resorting to “hitting low.”  It’s not surprising, then, that Packers receiver Randall Cobb was injured on Sunday when he was struck in the knee by the helmet of Ravens safety Matt Elam.  Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers told reporters that Elam should have avoided taking a shot on Cobb’s knee: “I just felt like, from my vantage point, he had plenty of time to not take out a guy’s legs in that situation.  I think he could have hit in the proper hitting zone or politely asked him to either lay down or step out of bounds.”

I also lamented the feminization of motorcycle gangs in the wake of the New York biker rage story.  It turns out that the situation is worse than I imagined: three of the participants have since been identified as police officers.  As for the remaining members of the Hollywood Stuntz brood, they behaved, according to Steve Cook, expert on motorcycle gangs at the Heartland Law Enforcement Training Institute, more like teenage schoolgirls that hardened street thugs. “These guys,” moaned a crestfallen Cook, “are obviously looking for attention.”

Washoe District Judge Connie Steinheimer, clearly moved by my paean to the Hells Angels, accepted a lenient plea deal from Gilroy Angel Cesar Villagrana who shot several people during a melee at the Nugget casino in Sparks, NV. At the same time, she sentenced rival Vagos gang member Ernesto Gonzalez to life in prison for killing San Jose chapter president Jethro Petigrew during the same shootout.  Rejecting any and all claims of self defense, Steihheimer railed: “The court is in no way condoning your behavior and found it abhorrent and no justification for it and that there was overwhelming evidence of your guilt.”

I also predicted that, despite the government shutdown, food inspectors would continue to drop the ball on food safety.   A week after a strain of salmonella sickened nearly 300 people who ate Foster Farms poultry, the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service still can’t connect the dots.  Dr. David P. Goldman, assistant administrator of the Office of Public Health Science at the service, noted that inspectors and labs have been working ceaselessly to definitively peg the source of the current outbreak.  Tom Super of the National Chicken Council took advantage of the hapless investigation and crowed, “This isn’t a recall, because they haven’t been able to link it to a specific product.”  Now there’s something to be proud of.