Rich, white and still has troubles...

Rich white thugs, begone

By Mark Morford

Let’s not get crazy. Let’s not take the NBA’s rather surprising and (cautiously) encouraging smackdown of racist billionaire team owner Donald Sterling – a member, mind you, of the most inbred, powerfully entrenched clubs in history, humans who’ve quite literally gotten away with murder since the dawn of American capitalism (hi, Koch Brothers) as anything other than what it likely is – as rare as an abortion clinic in Texas, as precious as a good book in Idaho.

Depending on your personal cynicism quotient, you can also see the NBA’s double-barreled rejection of Sterling merely as the brand protecting itself; commissioner Adam Silver surely weighed the costs/benefits of various punishments and realized the cultural damage from a wimpy wrist-slap would’ve been far worse than dealing with Sterling’s imminent lawsuits and scowling outcries, et al.

Whatever. From all indications, it’s been obvious for years that Sterling is a long-established racist, a creep and a bit of a monster. Even the NBA knows it. The only real scandal is that it took the league so long to do anything about it.

And let’s skip right by other controversial team owners and murky league histories – that’s never been the purview of this column, and besides, professional sports is so rife with hypocrisy, egomania, celebrity and capitalist doublespeak that to hold the Sterling decision up as some sort of sparkling moral standard would be short lived, and just a little bit gross. Right, Redskins?

Despite all that, there is something very worthy of note in the Sterling story, a potent reminder of the historic tonal shift that’s been underway in American life for nearly two decades now, and which was hammered home most persuasively in the 2012 election.

It’s simply this: old, wealthy white males no longer rule the universe like they used to. They are no longer free to roam like unchecked king of the beasts, safe in the knowledge that the social architecture supports and encourages their every bigoted whim and egomaniacal burp. Obviously? Not even close.

Old, rich white males, once the primary organizing principle of American politics and religion, and therefore the perfect, go-to demon of every female activist and women’s studies program in the land, are literally dying off in power and significance.

To be replaced with – well, who knows what? Some new, mutant form of power and money, to be sure (capitalism never dies – it merely adapts). But at least it ain’t the same old patriarchy anymore, the one that’s ruled since the Romans joined with the church to entrench the male paradigm, demean the Other and make all women whores. Isn’t that amazing? Sort of?

(If you haven't heard this story I will fill you in. The major owner of the Clippers Basketball Team was recorded some how making racially charged comments to his 'girlfriend'. Now to say 'girlfriend' I think is a stretch, the woman, who is mixed race Asian/Caucasian, is what is know as a "Gold Digger". She is basically a prostitute, she lives off the guy, takes his money and he gets something in return. She is given free rain to screw anyone she wants. He just doesn't want her to bring the guys to a game and have to sit with them. He used racially derogatory language to make his point. But she is a whore, they just don't say it in this article.)

Don’t just take my word for it. Surely you’ve witnessed the birth (and subsequent, ongoing, sputtering death) of the Tea Party – essentially a cult of panicked white Southern males terrified of losing their grip on… well, just about everything?

The Tea Party was born of this exact shift. Theirs is a relatively small, but very vocal gaggle of aging white Southerners clinging desperately to the last vestiges of what made their America “great” – sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, repression, isolationism, guns, sexual dread, anti-science lug-headedness, mal-education and a total lack of fresh salads.

Can we slot the Sterling slapback into this same category? I think we can. After all, the NBA is just like any other major American corporation – hell-bent on protecting and maximizing profits. But until recently, that protection has been afforded by the wealthy elite, the true demon-lords of capitalism. And now they just ate one of their own. And the rest of the country cheered wildly. Well, most of them, anyway.

Which goes to show you – what, exactly? The power of the new, mixed-ethnicity cultural norm? That being a nasty white guy with lots of money and power isn’t enough to do whatever the hell you want anymore? I’m not exactly sure. After all, Sterling got away with it for years. Many others still do. But the culture – with the help of social media – finally caught up.

Indeed, the shift wrought of the Obama Age is messy and imperfect as any upheaval of power in American history. But it’s palpable, and it keeps making itself known in laudable fits and starts. And the good news is, according to the increasingly mixed-race, female-driven demographics of the nation, it’s never shifting back. Sorry, Fox News. And your dad.

But let’s not get too excited. Despite these apparent “advances” in race discussions, despite even what’s happening with gay marriage as it enjoys victory after victory in courts across the land, you have but to look at what’s happening to, say, women’s rights to note that the entrenched male dogma won’t go quietly, and will likely never vanish completely.

Maybe you haven’t noticed? Abortion rights across huge swaths of the nation have been quietly hacked to bits, at the behest of the Republican party, which has employed some of the nastiest tactics and barefaced sexism in history to brutally restrict access to abortion clinics, thus forcing the closure of dozens of women’s health centers since 2011.

And let’s not forget the ever-popular one percent, still cruising along like false gods in the corridors of Wall Street power, fully ensconced in armor built over decades. As increasingly obscene executive salaries prove, the chasm between the working class and the wealthy elite is only getting wider.

And to top it off, it’s all happening with the full blessing of (a sad majority of) the Supreme Court, a gang of five who just can’t resist giving corporations and the wealthy even more power to buy elections and cram their agenda down the national gullet. Hey, it worked for Bush – twice! Right, Scalia?

So that leaves us, where, exactly? Right: messy. Messy and imperfect, but still banging at the armor. You think?

Look, it’s utterly naïve to suggest the race discussion is making massive strides, or that country is on a perfectly healthy course WRT women and minorities, or that power is shifting back to the people. But it also seems obvious that the hoary old hierarchies aren’t holding anymore, that the patriarchal armor is indeed cracking and light might, just might, be peeking through. Isn’t that worth applauding? Just a little?