Donald Sterling

[Tonus]

You want a world of thought police. The fact is that his private beliefs did not noticeably have any effect on his public actions. The NAACP was prepared to offer him an award before all this.

The bold portion may be the most bizarre thing in the whole case. Sterling's private views may have had an effect on his public actions, seeing as he was sued twice (in 2003 and 2006) for acts of housing discrimination. The latter suit was brought by the US Department of Justice. He settled both cases, one confidentially and one with a multi-million dollar fine, but denied wrongdoing in either case.

Did the NAACP not know about his past?

The privacy issue is the part of this that won't get much attention because it led to the "outing" and punishment of a generally disagreeable man who made disgusting and indefensible comments. But it bears pointing out (again) that he isn't being prosecuted by the government for comments he made in private company. He's been suspended and may be forced to sell his team under NBA bylaws that he agreed to abide by.

It will be interesting to see if he will challenge the suspension (which puts him, to say the least, in an awkward situation) or the demand to sell the team (assuming it gets the expected support from the other owners). There has been an article or two that suggested that the NBA was well aware of what kind of person Sterling was for many years, and had hoped that he would pass away before they were forced to take a stand against him, and they might not be very happy that they're pulled into this situation because some floozy learned how to record audio with her iPhone.