A celebrity gossip website posts a recording of a conversation between an allegedly  racist, septuagenarian  basketball team owner and a former 20-something girlfriend, and the President of the United States,  9,500  miles away in Malaysia, weighs in with another race speech? 

When asked about Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s  conversation with someone named V. Stiviano,  Obama jumped right into the question without any firsthand knowledge of the situation.

The Harvard-trained lawyer based his opinion on the mainstream media news story which based its story on a gossip site. Did Obama speak to the parties involved before he commented on the incident? Before the voice was even confirmed to be Sterling’s, Obama called the remarks “incredibly offensive.” 

The president certainly does rush to judgment a lot when it comes to race issues. The Cambridge police were “acting stupidly” in the Gates case, Trayvon Martin, whom Obama had never met, could have been his son if he had one, and now we have Obama using the Sterling issue to talk about the racial divide.

Funny, how no reporter asks  about  Steve Utash, the 54-year-old white guy in Detroit beaten into a coma by blacks or random “knockout game” attacks by black youths on whites. It just never seems to come up at these press conferences.

But an audio recording of a white sports team owner telling his former African-American-Mexican girlfriend, currently being accused of embezzling $1.8 million from the Sterling family, not to bring blacks or Magic Johnson to Clippers games, has prompted Mr. Obama to deliver yet another history lesson on the black experience.

From Youtube:

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk. That's what happened here,

The United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation, that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination

We’ve made enormous strides, but you’re going to continue to see this percolate up every so often…And I think that we just have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, teaching our children differently, but also remaining hopeful that part of why statements like this stand out some much is because there has been this shift in how we view ourselves.

[the NBA has] an awful lot of African American players, it’s steeped in African American culture. And I suspect that the NBA is going to be deeply concerned in resolving this.

Obama chose his target well this time. According to the Department of Justice Sterling does not have a ‘sterling’ record when it comes to race relations. In 2009 he ponied up $2.73 million in a federal discrimination lawsuit after his company allegedly refused to rent apartments to blacks and Hispanics in greater Los Angeles.

Oddly, the lawsuit and subsequent fines did not prevent the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP from naming Sterling “humanitarian of the year” in their upcoming 100th anniversary gala scheduled for May 15. Speaking on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” NAACP Interim Vice-President Lorraine Miller stated that her group will not be honoring the racist Mr. Sterling and is strongly urging the leaders to rescind the humanitarian award. The organization will be holding a press conference early Monday morning according to press reports. I hope NAACP officials can explain why Sterling’s “outrageous” and racist  remarks made to one of his lady friends trumps his refusal to rent to blacks when it comes to handing out awards. Bizarre.

Even more bizarre is Obama in Malaysia, of all places, stammering and stuttering on camera, about a dirty old man’s problems with his trophy girlfriend hanging out with blacks.