LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s full interview with Anderson Cooper aired last night. It was clear from the previously released clips and quotes that Sterling made little sense, offered a weak and incomplete argument for why he spouted racism in a recorded conversation, and did little to redeem himself from the scandal. He also sounded confused and somewhat pitiful, not that I felt at all sorry for him. Sterling’s wife, Shelly, told Barbara Walters in a separate interview that her estranged husband, 80, is suffering from the early stages of dementia. We seemed to be seeing evidence of that in the interview.
Now that the full interview is out, it’s even worse than the clips suggested. Sterling goes on a bizarre rant against Magic Johnson, spouts even more racist ideations and even accuses Anderson Cooper of being racist. He is a confused, octogenarian bigot and I just wonder why it’s taken so long for this to get out, given the many discrimination lawsuits he’s faced over the years. Here’s some of what Sterling told Cooper.
Breaks down when asked if V. Stiviano was trying to extort him
She is a good person. She is a beautiful person. There’s 15 of her. Fifteen hispanic kids. Sisters and brothers. And she supports them all. Perhaps she’s made some mistakes. I thought she cared for me. I was stupid. How could a girl care for a man 51 years older? [starts crying]She’s not a bad person, she has to survive. She’s a street person… Whatever she did good or bad, I’m the guilty for uttering those terrible ugly words that I don’t mean. I made such a mistake [continues crying]. I thought that woman really cared for me…
On if there’s more tapes out there
They say there are a hundred. I don’t know what she baited me to say… I don’t know why she released it.On how he became V. Stiviano’s sugar grandpa
If I really can be honest, this girl a hundred men could look at her and perhaps they wouldn’t even think she’s pretty, but she was something special. The point that I’m making is, she was a woman who really never asked for anything. She had a way of walking by Neiman Marcus and walking by the window and saying ‘sweetie do you think that dress is beautiful?’ and if you’re a man you would want to go buy the dress. I was generous… she was so nice and so sweet for the two years… She never really asked… she tried to help her family, the 15 people, what a job. I just would like to know why she did it, it’s like a woman stabbing you in the chest or shooting you.Trashes Magic Johnson
I’m hurt that he called me up and he said ‘don’t do anything, wait until you hear from me.’ Then somebody called me later and said ‘he doesn’t want to be involved.’ Then he released a tape… that I talked to him in confidence. I didn’t give any interviews, you’re my interview…He acts so holy. He made love to every girl in every city in America and he had AIDS. And when he had those AIDS I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him. I hoped he could live and be well… Is he an example for children? Because he has money he’s able to treat himself, but Magic Johnson is irrelevant in this thing. He didn’t do anything harmful… and I respect him and I admire everything he does… I would like to help even more if he would offer me an opportunity to help. I like to help minorities. [smiles]
He lured me into waiting a week. ‘Don’t do anything, I know the girl, don’t do anything, I’ll help you…’ I think he wanted me to just do nothing so he could buy the team.
On how Magic Johnson does nothing for ‘the black people’ [he has a foundation, that’s not true]
What has he done, can you tell me? Big Magic Johnson, what has he done? He’s got AIDS! Did he… help anybody in South LA? What kind of a guy goes to every city and has sex with every girl? Then he catches HIV. I think he should be ashamed of himself, I think he should go into the background. But what does he do for the black people? He doesn’t do anything.The Jewish people have a company and it’s for people who want to borrow money and it’s no interest… we want to help people… I’m just telling you, he does nothing, it’s all talk.
There’s no African American… they all want to play golf with me. Everyone wants to be with me.
Has he done everything he can do to help minorities? I don’t think he is a good example for the children of Los Angeles. That he would go and do what he did and then get AIDS…
What does he do? I’m giving away and helping minorities. Does he do that? Jews, when they get successful, they will help their people… Some of the African Americans, they don’t want to help anybody. What has Magic Johnson really done for children’s hospital?
Thinks the players still love him
The players don’t hate me. The media hates. It’s all the media. Why wouldn’t the players like me because I’m respectful?On the players reversing their jerseys
Well if one does it then all the others have to. What do you think? You think they’re all just gonna walk off the team? Can any of us stop working?… I contend that they love me. They know I’m not a racist.People are intimidated by even the thought of racism.
Anderson Cooper brings up the lawsuit Elgin Baylor filed in 2009, accusing Sterling of a ‘plantation mentality’
I think you have more of a plantation mentality than I do. You know what? And I think you’re more of a racist than I am because I’m not a racist, and I’ve never been a racist and I’ll never be a racist. I don’t know what that means.Do I own them? My players earn a hundred million dollars a year. Do I own them? I think I create opportunities for them so they could make a hundred million. Of course they earn that and they work harder than any other sport.
Let this guy talk and it doesn’t take him long to spout racist crap. He knows how to sound contrite so he peppers it with denials and playing the victim, but he can’t keep from saying horrible things.
It’s in no way true that Magic Johnson isn’t charitable. He founded the Magic Johnson Foundation in 1991. They’ve since given away millions, educated hundreds of thousands of people about HIV and AIDs, given free HIV tests and helped bring technology to disadvantaged young people through their state of the art Community Empowerment Centers, of which there are 16 in urban areas throughout the US. (The Community Empowerment Centers were founded with a partnership with HP and include 20 to 40 computers for community use.)
The stuff about V. Stiviano needing money for her family, that’s the oldest con in the book. I just saw an Austrian movie called Paradise: Love, about older women who traveled to Kenya for sex tourism. The young men who slept with them would never ask directly for money, they would always need it for a family crisis.
This guy is done with the NBA, and his wife is going to be forced out as co-owner too. There’s a rule in the NBA constitution that makes Shelly’s ouster inevitable. The NBA spokesman clarified this in a statement. “If a controlling owner’s interest is terminated by a three-quarter vote, all other team owners’ interests are automatically terminated as well.” The NBA spokesperson added that it doesn’t matter whether the owners are related or not. Sterling indicated in his interview that he’s probably not going to fight for ownership of the team although he’s optimistic about whether he’ll be forced out. “I’m a good owner… but because the media says that the owners want me out doesn’t mean that they want me out.” Yes and the players still love him too. Delusional.
Here’s the video where Sterling trashes Magic Johnson. (The worst racist stuff is at the end.)
Sterling cries over Stiviano
Sterling calls Cooper racist (that’s at 3:00)
Enough with a platform for this turd.
+1000
Plus one. We have to stop talking about this maniac. He’s a waste of space, and now he is being given a huge audience to spew his BS to.
Agree, and he’s becoming quite the contortionist–perpetually sticking his foot in his mouth while stepping on his own d***.
He sucks and needs to fade away into oblivion but I’m still very happy this story broke, if for no other reason than the fact that there still exists a very vocal faction of the population that believes racism is dead.
Agreed. I am done here with this person and the archivist, and the spider-wife. Between this a-hole’s sick mind and Kirk Cameron’s War, I’m nauseous and depressed. No more from me on this.
As a fellow Jew: STFU!!!
Agreed.
Fremdschämen
+ 1,000,000. My husband is Jewish and he thinks Donald Sterling is an embarrassing abomination.
Also there are African American Jews, smdh. So ignorant in his nasty attempt to rationalize his hate.
ditto.
How much bigger can that hole get, surely he’s reached China by now? What a racist idiot.
“I’m not racist, but……”
And I don’t even really know what it means, but…
@Liv says,
“I’m not racist, but……” I play one on TV
“I’m not racist, but……” I have racist tendencies.
“I’m not racist, but……” you must be.
“I’m not racist, but……” okay, you got me. I am a racist.
LOL
This somehow went even worse than I thought it would! And I don’t believe this is dementia. I believe this is a billionaire who has never been held accountable for his actions by the public (and who doesn’t think he’s wrong in the first place) and is finally having to explain himself….and it’s not going well.
That’s my opinion, too. He knows exactly what he is saying.
I love it! I say give him more rope. Keep talking Sterling, you’re condemning yourself better than anyone else could.
Agreed. How did this guy amass such wealth and power? He must have had these beliefs for a long time. What business and social networks allow or perpetuate this behavior?
I don’t think he has dementia either. He seems pretty sharp, but also stubborn and set in his ways(as in “I’ve gotten this far doing it my way, so there!”). My great aunt was similar. She was kinda racist but she was completely with it till she died. Insult to seniors to attribute all inappropriate things to “dementia” or “Alzheimer’s.” Not to mention an insult to people who suffer from those ailments and their family.
Yep. My grandmother had senile dementia. It never caused her to be racist, and she was nowhere near as organized in her conversations as this creep is.
This man is so vile.
You know his advisers and lawyers were doing facepalms during the interview – one for what this idiot said, and two for letting him go on an interview and say this mess.
That’s right, folks! If you haven’t heard of any companies or foundations that help black people (do what exactly??) which are, in particular, started and/or run by black people, then they simply don’t exist!
I will now attempt to roll my eyes as hard as I can. Stand by.
I think his is both a true life-long racist and someone who is starting to get dementia. It takes some of the sweetness out of taking him down. Obviously this is on an entirely different level, but it is sort of like tracking down and throwing into jail a 90-year-old former Nazi prison guard. Everyone deserves facing the music, but the pathos makes it less enjoyable.
I agree.
Fu*k him. Just fu*k him.
another one.enough.
SIT DOWN.
Part of me feels bad for him for getting involved with Stiviano (he’s kind of right… what does a 31 year old woman want with an 81 year old man other than his money)… but at the same time, I feel as though he should be held accountable for his racist remarks and sad behavior.
Agree he’s trash, but this chick, who is 31 going on 11 if you’ve watched her interview, is no prize. There are no appealing, or even interesting, characters in this story.
I don’t think he is suffering from dementia. This guy has a history of racism.. Was he demented when he tried to keep minorities from renting apartments in buildings that he owns purely due to racism? I don’t think so. He’s just an old rascist dude whether he ‘knows’ it or not.
Agreed. I’ve seen dementia and this is not it. His rambling and grasping at straws, yes. But that’s a product of him trying desperately to save his ass. His thoughts are organized, he’s recalling and circling back to earlier parts of the conversation etc. he even stops mid sentence when he realizes he’s made a mistake. Not demented, just racist and trying to save himself.
i agree. he might suffer from dementia now, but that’s not where his racism stems from, since he’s been a heavily-documented racist piece of sh*t for decades.
At what point does this stop. Granted I believe he is a total scum BUT my grandfather is about his age and he has started saying the craziest things. He has yet to go on a racist rant to his mistress though.
Does he have kids? They need to keep him home and make this stop. I believe he knows what he is saying and it is probably how he feels, it just needs to stop.
my grandpa is a Korean War vet and when we recently took him out to a Chinese restaurant he started telling the waitress how he really whooped some orientals back in his day. Then he told her he wishes his grandkids “were as smart as oriental kids because they work harder than Americans in school.” The waitress usually just laughed because my grandpa is 92 and basically old people sometimes get to a point where they lose their filter and you just have to say “Okay grandpa. Want some more chicken?” and change the subject.
that being said, Donald Sterling is an a-hole for the fact that he has a history of discrimination with the housing issue which should have made him owning an NBA team suspect. He needs to retire from the public right now.
Does he have kids? Yes. But the stories about how he treated his son, who died from a drug overdose, are disgusting.
From Sports Illustrated:
“Shortly after the Clippers made Danny Manning the top pick of the 1988 NBA draft, team owner Donald Sterling invited the player and his agent, Ron Grinker, to talk contract in Beverly Hills. It was recounted to me how Sterling lounged around his mansion in a bathrobe open to his navel, wearing nothing underneath.
At one point Sterling’s preteen son wandered in and was chastised for skipping Hebrew school. The owner commanded the boy, “Go to your room and get undressed.” The child slouched upstairs. Sterling followed. The next thing Manning heard was a belt thrashing and the boy wailing, as Grinker bounded up the stairs yelling, “Stop! Stop! We’ll sign.”
Disgusting. That’s even worse than his comments here.
Then I don’t blame the kid for letting his dad make a huge ass out of himself instead of locking him in a room.
That’s one of the most calculating things I’ve ever heard. Just to make sure that I understand what you’re saying, is this a story about a man who used child abuse as a negotiating tactic as well as a punitive action for disobedience? It reads as though he ‘lucked out’ by being able to synchronize events and was able to kill two birds with one stone: grim. That’s not quite the 1985 interview with L. Ron Hubbard’s son in Playboy levels of abuse, but Lucifer’s Cabana Boy here is aiming high. Again, grim.
often when people make racist remarks we tend to believe it has a skid seeks to excuse or minimize but in fact when asked for an explanation we could encounter as it’s really big racist; I do not know what kind but my lair of an asshole (sorry for the insult) I hope that there will be changes from the middle of the basketball
Just STFU!!!!!! I am black and and I am starting to feel sorry for him. He’s so pathetic. How can one person be so racist and so stupid? It has to be some kind of disorder. And he’s obviously too old and too far gone for any kind of treatment. Maybe the most humane thing we can do is put him down.
And is there not one person in this man’s life that loves him? Tell him to sit down and shut up!!!!
I’m Jewish and on behalf of my faith I just feel compelled to apologize. This piece of excrement does NOT represent what our faith is all about. He is the antithesis of it. I just wanted to put that out there. He offends me and every Jew who truly understands what it means to be Jewish.
“And when he had those AIDS”??? WTF?
I know Mickey Rourke ruined his pretty face after years of botched surgeries, Donald does not even have to do anything to have a face like that. Sorry, I know it is petty to mock one’s appearance but this guy is asking for it.
Keep digging that hole Sterling.
What an uneducated jackass.
Good God, man, just stop. Stop talking. How have you not figured out that the more you yap, the more people hate you?
Oh Lord. The Magic Johnson stuff he said was crazy. Firstly, he kept saying AIDS and Anderson had to actually correct him. I also think he misses the point. Was Magic really irresponsible and wrong? Yes – but he’s the first person to admit it. He talks all the time about how dumb he was and how he didn’t think he could get sick, and then he did. Johnson’s major contribution when he admitted to having HIV was that, at the time, HIV was still considered a “gay” disease. Johnson was among the first high-profile STRAIGHT people to admit to having HIV, and that caught peoples’ attention.
Also, who is this guy to critique anyone’s morality? This man has been married for years yet openly cheats with much younger women (and not just V. – there was a woman before her who sued him after the breakup and he countered by arguing she was a hooker).
I was attending MSU (Magic’s alma mater) when Magic announced his HIV status. I remember going to the cafeteria at the peak dinner hour and you could hear a pin drop. His announcement made an incredible impact on young people at that time and the fact that he’s still in relatively good shape after 20+ years still gives a lot of people hope.
As some has mentioned, Magic took responsibility for his promiscuity, but for some reason, Sterling doesn’t think he took enough of it, which earns a resounding ‘HUH?’
why is this vile piece of sh*t being given a platform?
On the crying: He realises he shoul’ve never PAID for THE operation of operations to take place.
He cant out HIM, but SHE can, so she did 😉
HELL YEah im confused to.
Sterling did himself no favors by doing this interview. This interview was so odd. I think he’s just an old man stuck the Jim Crow days. His Magic Johnson rant was truly bizarre.
OMG MAKE HIM STOP ALREADY. I’m Jewish and he is embarrassing me and my entire faith. Seriously, I’m mortified that he and I are the same religion.
I really do feel compelled to clarify that his twisted beliefs have NOTHING to do with the core teachings of the Jewish faith, which include treating everyone with respect and dignity, and leaving the world a better place than you found it. Neither of which this a-hole is doing.
ENOUGH ALREADY YOU ARE GIVING US A BAD IMAGE. WE ALREADY HAVE TO DEAL WITH MADOFF, WE DON’T NEED YOUR HELP TOO!!!!
Izzy, please don’t feel you need to apologize for this idiot. He’s no more a representative of your faith than Hitler was for Christianity. If he spent more time practicing his faith, he wouldn’t be in this mess.
STOP TALKING!!!!!
“If I really can be honest, this girl a hundred men could look at her and perhaps they wouldn’t even think she’s pretty, but she was something special.”
OUCH!! :O What a nasty vindictive man.
This turd isn’t fit to clean Magic Johnson’s toilet bowl.
I guess he is too old to learn that when you are in a deep hole, you should stop digging before the walls crumble down on you.
Does Sterling not see the irony when at the same time he’s proclaiming himself not racist against Black people, he’s blaming his troubles on Black people & criticizing Black people?
He’s an old bigot and a racist clearly, but I also think he has the onset of dementia because of his incoherent rambling. It doesn’t excuse his behavior. I just think it plays a factor in failing to conduct an interview in such a way to hide his blatant racist views and rehab his image. I can’t believe his attorneys and PR and other people on his “team” allowed this interview to go forward. They had to have known it was going to be an epic failure and train wreck. His defending that gold digger was pathetic.
This guy thinks he invented the NBA and basketball. His delusion that he’s the one who creates jobs simply because he’s the owner is one that’s widely shared, however. No. The people who create jobs are the people who buy the product. The people who maintain the jobs are the people who make the product.
What’s with his insistence that Magic Johnson slept with every “girl” in every city in the U.S.? The way he repeats it, he seems to really believe it’s literally true. He’s definitely jealous.
Ok, I really, genuinely feel bad for this man. He is old, a product of another time, lost in a sea of the 21st century. He doesn’t sound coherent and he’s a mess.
Please. Show pity. If this is the worst he’s ever done in his thousand years on Earth, there’s a lot worse out there.
He’s a sh-tbox, I agree. But I still feel badly for the old man.
Sterling is evil, so is his wife. They have been racists for their entire lives, have been fined federally twice, and have a long history of truly terrible behavior towards minorities. However there is an excellent article in the SI Vault about Sterling and his wife that documents every horrible deed they have done. It was written over 10 years ago.
He just got caught on tape and now is playing the pity me I made a mistake, I love the blacks. It’s a lie, he’s spent a lifetime donating money that charities have had to chase him down to get for years. If they got the donations at all, but he took out the full page ads in the LA Times to make sure people knew about the fake donations. The Sterlings are real POS, and always have been. Now they are toxic nuclear waste and being treated as such. It’s about time too.