The penalty given Donald Sterling by the NBA – a $2.5 million fine, lifetime ban from all NBA games and practices, complete isolation from the Clippers -- is undoubtedly the most severe ever handed down to anybody for a remark made in the privacy of his own home. As is commonplace with our free media establishment today, a number of elements are being overlooked in this story. There’s a close resemblance to the Paula Deen mess of recent memory. Both involve wealthy individuals, with large levels of public exposure, and rather unpleasant personalities, being attacked using means which, on their face, are completely illegitimate. In both cases, the media has gone along with the joke without any sign of hesitation. With Deen, the material, derived from a thirty-year-old deposition (a fact lost on just about everyone – if you’d conducted a poll you’d have discovered that the vast majority believe that she’d made her remarks the previous week),...(Read Full Post)