NBA basketball team owner banned for life

[glatt]

I don't follow basketball, but you would have to be living under a rock to not hear about this story.

A rich old ugly white man basically pays an attractive young mixed-race woman to be his girlfriend and be with him sexually, but treats her with contempt and makes blatantly racist comments to her. She records these and other comments for him because he has a bad memory, but she releases them to the public. He happens to own a professional basketball team, and the particularly racist comment in question is where he tells her to stop bringing her black friends to the games.

Everyone is outraged at his racist statements and the head of the basketball organization bans him from the game for life and fines him $2.5 million. The NBA head also is actively trying to force him to sell his basketball team.

So those are the basic facts.

I think this guy is a jerk, and has been a jerk for much of his life. I completely disagree with his actions. (Both the buying very expensive gifts for the girl only when she satisfies him with good sex, and the racist comments.) And I find myself being outraged, along with everyone else.

But I wonder about this. Actually, I don't wonder. We have this thing in our country called the Constitution. And the 1st Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. This asshole was in his own house, talking to his girlfriend. He wasn't shouting "fire" in a movie theater. He wasn't calling for the assassination of anyone. He wasn't breaking any of those speech laws. He was simply expressing his fucked up opinions. The 1st Amendment is not needed to protect speech that everyone agrees with. It's there for speech that is shocking and perhaps unpopular. His speech is exactly what the 1st Amendment is there to protect.

I know the NBA is a business. And as a business, it needed to respond in some way to his offensive remarks so it could distance itself from him. I know the NBA Commissioner has the authority to fine members of the NBA, and to ban people. But I think that this is out of control. The angry mob had their pitchforks and their torches, and they wanted blood. The Commissioner gave it to them/us. It's about the mob's blood lust and NBA's profits.

Meanwhile a guy who only said something in his own fucking house is having his pathetic life destroyed.