Dennis Prager


"It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to? ... You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that ... and not to bring them to my games. I'm just saying, in your lousy f---ing Instagrams, you don't have to have yourself with, walking with black people. ... Don't put him [Magic] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don't bring him to my games."

That these comments are racist and therefore contemptible goes without saying. But the incident raises other issues that are not as clear as the racism in Sterling's comments, yet they are at least as important.

One is the increasing release -- and acceptability -- of private recordings and videos. Take the video released last month of a married congressman engaged in a passionate kiss with a married member of his staff. This was a security surveillance video. Isn't the only reason for the very existence of surveillance cameras to catch criminals? Why didn't the release of such a video shock the media and the country?




Dennis Prager
