Hypocritical Plutocracy

The Buying and Selling of Free Speech

Free speech is usually more of an idea than a civic reality.  H. L. Mencken, writing in the 1920's observed that the Bolsheviks showed the way for the West--which has clung on to the ideal of free speech far longer than most.

The Russian Bolsheviki . . . . once they were in the saddle, they decreed the abolition of the old imperial censorship and announced that speech would be free henceforth--but only so long as it kept within the bounds of the Bolshevist revelation!  In other words, any citizen was free to think and speak whatever he pleased--but only so long as it did not violate certain fundamental ideas.  [H. L. Mencken, "The Genealogy of Etiquette", Prejudices: Volume I, edited by Marion Rogers (New York: The Literary Classics of America, Inc. 2010), p. 99.]

Nowadays we are moving much more into a Bolshevik world where some speech is not deemed equal at all, insofar as it violates some cherished ideas.  Mencken goes on in his essay to argue that the Bolsheviki notion has been precisely the "sort of freedom that has prevailed in the United States since the first days."

We have recently been treated to the debacle over the Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling who has privately expressed sentiments which fall outside of "Bolshevist" revelation.  Sterling provides an excellent touchstone for Mencken's thesis that free speech is a chimera in the West.
  He represents a classic case study because he said things which were abhorrent to most.  His free speech rights evaporated more quickly than ether on a hot stove--yet the abstract civic ideal of free speech argues that it can exist only if abhorrent sentiments and thought remain free and protected from suppression.  His case demonstrates that the US (and the West, by extension) has become progressively more and more Bolshevistic.

Sterling has been attacked and done real, substantial, and actual damage because of what he said--and not even in public, mind.  What he said was actually a private conversation, recorded without his knowledge  (therefore, illegal), and made public by someone else.

There is something rotten here.  Ben Shapiro gives us his take:

In November 2009, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling settled a lawsuit in which the Department of Justice alleged that Sterling had discriminated against Hispanics, blacks and families without children in his rental properties. The lawsuit contained testimony that Sterling had suggested Hispanics were poor tenants because they "smoke, drink, and just hang around the building," and that "black tenants smell and attract vermin." The settlement cost him and his insurers $2.73 million.

The NBA and the national media said virtually nothing. That same year, the NAACP gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.  

What!  How on earth could the NAACP have done that?   Something other than principles had to have been involved.

In 2005, Sterling signed a check for more than $5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that he had attempted to prevent non-Koreans from renting in his facilities in Koreatown.  The NBA and the national media said virtually nothing.

This week, Sterling's 31-year-old girlfriend, V. Stiviano, released a tape of the 80-year-old racist being an 80-year-old racist. Sterling apparently told Stiviano he didn't want her posting pictures of black men on her Instagram account and didn't want her bringing black men to Clippers games.

The entire media establishment suddenly went insane.

Colin Cowherd of ESPN idiotically called for the league to void all of Sterling's contracts with his players and agents — a violation of basic contract law.

Magic Johnson declared that the NBA should force Sterling to sell his team — a violation of basic contract law.

President Barack Obama, determined never to let an opportunity pass to label America racist, took to the microphones to declare Sterling's racism a symptom of America's "legacy of race and slavery and segregation."

This is, at the very least, hypocrisy.

• Last year, Sterling signed coach Doc Rivers, who is black, to a contract worth $7 million per year.
• Chris Paul, who is black, is slated to make nearly $19 million this season. 
• Blake Griffin, who is black, is slated to make $16 million. 
• DeAndre Jordan will make $11 million. 

 The coach, these players and their agents surely knew about Sterling's legacy. So did Cowherd, Johnson and Obama. They all said nothing. 

Ah, money.  How sweet the sound.   These guys knew all along that Sterling was racist and practised (not just talked) discrimination in his business activities.  Yet they did nada.  They said nada.  Such commitment to free speech.  Such dedication to the Bill of Rights.  We wish. 

But the big problem here isn't hypocrisy. The big problem is that the market is turning on Sterling not over action, but over words. Sterling's a pig, and that's been no secret for decades. But what triggered America's response? Sterling's thoughts. American society now considers expression of thought to be significantly more important than action. Sterling got away with actual discrimination for years. But now he is caught on tape telling his gold-digging girlfriend he doesn't like blacks, and that's when the firestorm erupts?

Mencken argued that the Bolsheviks were committed to free speech, as long as it did remained conformed to "basic ideas" as defined and developed by the State Apparatchik.  This appears to be precisely the kind of freedom of speech operating in the United States today.  Mencken argued that from the beginning the US notion of free speech and Bolsheviki real-politick were kissing cousins.  The Sterling case proves him right again, after all these one hundred years.

But there is development. A peculiarly American twist has emerged.  The evolution of the Mencken thesis lies here: now discrimination is acceptable as long as  there's money in it for all, which means that free speech can be bought and paid for.  But, when there's more money to be made by crushing and excising the "free-speaker", the guillotine will fall quicker than a Jedi light-sabre. 

Human rights and freedoms are commodities to be traded.  Good profits can be made.  Sterling proved it for years, and the NAACP cheered.  But now, the piranhas scent blood.  Anyone care to bid for the LA Clippers?  Oh, Magic Johnson has called for the forced sale of the Clippers, and has reportedly made an offer.  How noble.  How principled.  Hypocrisy, thou art a rare jewel.  Freedoms and principles can be ignored for thirty pieces of silver in the United States.  Bribery and simony, thou art glorious.

What remains of free speech?  It has become a harlot to be bickered over and bartered for by the mercantile apparatchik.