SACRAMENTO, California—The Hoopster-in-Chief is upset. And so should basketball followers, regardless of shape, size, race and creed.
While headed for Manila for the most difficult leg of his four-nation Asian tour, United States President Barack Obama set aside diplomacy for a moment to take aim at the racist comments attributed to Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Obama, the first African American president and a die-hard basketball player and fan, said Sterling’s alleged racial rants against blacks need no interpreting.
He hopes the NBA gets to the bottom of the issue right away. At a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Obama said: “The owner (Sterling) is reported to have said some incredibly offensive racist statements that were published. I don’t think I have to interpret those statements for you; they kind of speak for themselves. When people—when ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk. And that’s what happened here.”
America’s 44th president left the Philippines on Tuesday after a two-day visit.
Obama walks a political tightrope in Manila as he reassures allies of support in their maritime conflicts with a rising China, without riling Beijing.
In a taped phone call posted by TMZ, the website that hovers between gossip and news, Sterling can be heard arguing with girlfriend V. Stiviano over her picture with NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson she had posted on Instagram.
During the phone call that Stiviano’s lawyer confirms is the real deal, Sterling tells his girlfriend he is upset because she wants to “broadcast” that she is “associating with black people” and later instructs her not to “bring any of them” to Clippers basketball games.
Stiviano is involved in a civil case with Sterling’s wife Rochelle. Sterling’s comments drew fire from all over and has installed him as the reigning national buffoon, displacing Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who wondered aloud if blacks “were better off as slaves picking cotton.”
If the controversy has been a distraction to the Clippers, it showed today.
They lost to their cross-state rivals, Golden State Warriors, 97-118. The Pacific Division playoff series is now tied at 2-2 going into the fifth game at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
The LA area is home to legions of basketball fans, including Pinoys who think that Sterling is a jerk but still love the Clippers conditionally—until the Lakers return to playoff form.
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Something horrible has happened in my hometown, Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija.
Arsenio Flores, the guy who blew the whistle on Cuyapo Mayor Amado R. Corpus, is dead.
Flores was shot multiple times in broad daylight, in front of his wife, by unknown gunmen at his panciteria last weekend, the height of the town’s fiesta, according to several Cuyapo friends quoting the police.
With Flores’ initiative, Corpus was tried and found guilty recently by the Sandiganbayan for solemnizing weddings by proxy in 2009.
Corpus, meted two four-year jail terms by the antigraft court for falsification of public documents, remains mayor while his case is on appeal.