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| Sandy Banks Columnist for The Los Angeles Times |
And so, what many suspected is documented.
The liberals of Los Angeles loved Donald Sterling. So much so that the liberal Los Angeles Times – acknowledging the paper knew of stories alleging Sterling was a bigot – headlined and sub-headlined a loving profile of Sterling on January 3, 2010 by reporter Sandy Banks this way:
Donald Sterling is generous, impolitic and eager to be liked
The Clippers owner has one of the largest real estate empires in Southern California, gives money to charitable causes and has been accused for years of being a bigot.
And oh so much money to liberal causes did Donald Sterling give. The Los Angeles Times was thrilled. Reported Ms. Banks:
I walked into the penthouse reception prepared to skewer Donald Sterling. But I had barely gotten through the door when I wound up in a group hug with the Clippers' owner and the NBA's top draft pick, heartthrob Blake Griffin.
Sterling might be a tight-fisted egomaniac, but he's also smart enough to know that it's hard to savage a man in print when he introduces you to the crowd as the "beautiful, fabulous writer for the Los Angeles Times. Here to make life better for underprivileged kids."
That's not exactly why I was at the Donald T. Sterling Charitable Foundation Summit, held Tuesday at his Sterling World Plaza in Beverly Hills.
You can't flip through our newspaper these days without spotting the giant ads Sterling buys promoting his awards and donations, his smiling face plastered among a jumble of names and cut-and-paste photos.
I wangled an invitation because I wanted to meet him. I was curious about the man -- and the motives -- behind the generosity. Sterling has been dogged for years by claims that he's a bigot. Was this simple image repair or true redemption, I wondered.
Banks spends a nanosecond noting that Sterling had previously had problems with a:housing discrimination lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department for $2.7 million. Four years ago, he spent millions to settle a similar lawsuit brought by a fair housing group…. Both accused him of trying to exclude blacks, Latinos and families with children from renting apartments in buildings he owns.
But hey. What’s a little bigotry between a rich donor to liberal favorites and the Times? So….on gushed this ace reporter from the Times in the Times:
Yet there he (Sterling) was last week playing Santa, handing out $1 million from his private charitable foundation to 10 high schools in South and East Los Angeles and 20 charities across Los Angeles County.
Got that? A million Sterling bucks to ten high schools in South and East LA plus 20 charities across Los Angeles County.
Ten high schools in South and East Los Angeles? Hmmm. The Times not long ago put together a project called Mapping LA, which naturally included a look at South and East Los Angeles. The paper reported that South LA has an ethnic background that is 56.7% Latino, 38% black, 2.2% white, 1.6% Asian and the rest “other”. And East LA? The paper ranked East LA as the least diverse in the city, with 96.7% of the population being Latino, the remainder miniscule populations of blacks, whites and Asians.
This is another way of saying, if the liberal political wisdom that minorities are all liberals is to be believed, Mr. Sterling was in fact doling out his bucks in big time fashion not just to the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP. He was also handing out dollars big time to schools concentrated 100% in the heavily Latino and black areas of Los Angeles. The Times story is replete with Sterling quotes that he has donated to “another fabulous Hispanic charity”, a high school “"with all the Hispanic kids” and so on.
The now-resigned head of the local NAACP chapter, Leon Jenkins, (whose resignation was caused by the Sterling kerfuffle) makes an appearance in the 2010 Times story, notably misidentified by Sterling as "Leroy" Jenkins. The Times purrs that Sterling calls Jenkins "one of the most fabulous men ever to run a charity." The paper also reports that
Leon Jenkins' NAACP chapter honored Sterling last spring with its coveted Lifetime Achievement Award. Among his achievements: Giving away thousands of free Clippers tickets to underprivileged children, filling rows of empty Staples Center seats.
The NAACP was not the only African-American group to be receiving Sterling’s money reported the paper. Writes reporter Banks: “The Black Business Assn. gave Sterling its Humanitarian Award in 2008 and enlisted him to chair last year's awards dinner. "I don't feel like he's a racist," president Earl "Skip" Cooper told me Tuesday night.”
And what about those twenty charities that the Times mentioned?
Over here at the Jewish Journal a spotlight on the relationship between the leadership of LA’s liberal Jewish community and Donald Sterling has switched on, creating a deer-in-the-headlights result.
Reports the Journal:
“Recent comments attributed to Donald Sterling, the Jewish owner of the Los Angeles Clippers who was banned for life from the league by the NBA's commissioner on April 29, have been denounced as racist by numerous area Jewish organizations, some of which have received donations amounting to tens of thousands of dollars from the embattled owner.
A search of public records, made available through the website Guidestar.com, indicates that from 2010 to 2012, the Donald T. Sterling Charitable Foundation gave at least $10,000 to groups including The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Jewish Vocational Service of Los Angeles (JVS) and the Museum of Tolerance.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, supported NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s actions. The museum received three donations of $10,000 between 2010-2012, according to Guidestar.com.”
….(Jewish) Federation CEO and President Jay Sanderson made clear in an April 29 phone interview with the Journal that his organization also would not consider future donations. It received $10,000 in 2012.”
The Journal also publishes this list of recipients of Sterling money:
• Yeshiva Gedolah of Los Angeles: $50,000 (2010).
• Beit T’Shuvah: $10,000 (2010); $10,000 (2011); $10,000 (2012).
• Jewish Vocational Service of Los Angeles: $10,000 (2010); $10,000
2011); $10,000 (2012).
• Los Angeles Jewish Home: $10,000 (2010); $10,000 (2011); $10,000 (2012).
• Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust: $10,000 (2010); $10,000 (2011); $10,000 (2012).
• Museum of Tolerance: $10,000 (2010); $10,000 (2011); $10,000 (2012).
• Vista Del Mar: $10,000 (2010); $10,000 (2011); $10,000 (2012).
• Guardians of the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging: $10,000 (2011); $10,000 (2012).
• Creative Arts Temple: $10,000 (2012).
• The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles: $10,000 (2012).
• Temple of the Arts: $10,000 (2012).
Read the full story: www.newsbusters.org
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