Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Top Clinton Aide Advised NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on the Donald Sterling Matter

This is really disgusting, the private sector NBA taking advice from a major league political crony. National Journal reports:
Standing on the sidelines of his son's soccer game Saturday morning, Doug Sosnik glanced at his Blackberry and noticed an email from NBA commissioner Adam Silver. It was the start of something bigger than basketball – about bigotry, big business, and the challenges of modern leadership.

Silver's email included a link to a TMZ story accusing Clippers owner Donald Sterling of racist statements. He asked the consultant to listen to the recording. Please, Silver wrote, give me any suggestions.

Why would Silver email Sosnik, a former political director in the Clinton White House and adviser to Democratic groups? Simple answer: The NBA is one of several private sector clients who pay Sosnik handsomely for his crisis-management experience in politics.

Sosnik replied: Anything you need.

When Silver announced Sterling's lifetime league ban and a $2.5 million fine three days later, he addressed a press corps as large as most presidents face – and his preparation was equally presidential. "It was intense," said Sosnik, who helped President Clinton survive the Monica Lewinsky impeachment scandal. He has advised the NBA for about 10 years.
And check this out:


3 comments:

  1. I have posted on some of the other pieces RW has posted related to Sterling and the NBA.

    Robert, I continue to find your coverage of this story to be pretty lacking and pretty unnecessarily intense. It feels like you are getting suckered into a story that really doesn't matter, just because it is the headline of the week. As we all know, the significance of a story is not necessarily correlated to the amount of widespread coverage it receives.

    So what if the NBA hires a legal consultant with government ties? The NBA is not the problem here, its the fact that there are government cronies in the private law sector that is the problem. We know that government cronies tend to reach higher levels of industry success (also a problem, of course) - but why should the NBA be criticized for using its resources to hire from those higher levels? That is a private business decision, made by a private business. Put the arenas built by public money to the side for a minute (I agree that this is an unacceptable reality of the league, but it is not related to this particular issue)

    Furthermore, who cares what candidates Adam Silver supports? The NBA didn't make that campaign contribution, did it?

    It feels like you are on a bit of a witch hunt in regards to the NBA, and are fishing for potential areas of criticism that are a bit of a stretch, to be honest.

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    1. In a way, I agree that this whole event is stupid and totally irrelevant to my personal life. However, 1. this event shows the raw actions of democracy in real time. I have never seen it (though I'm younger than most here) where masses of people jump on the band wagon when it is so obvious that nothing has been presented to convict a person. Yes, there's politics and the 2 party paradigm but this was blatant and no way was the propaganda being covered up with another story. 2. As most people here have mentioned, this has greater consequences when it comes to personal opinions and private conversations.

      Besides, Mr. Wenzel seems to do all sorts of things on here. Sometimes they're fun and have nothing to do with anything important or at least to certain individuals.

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  2. See BM? This isn't just "the marketplace". This is POLITICS. PERIOD. The Idiot Left has poisoned virtually everything in this country. For shit's sake even Piketty's book has sold out and it's in it's fourth edition already! It's like everyone has lost their fucking mind!

    Ron Paul was wrong. Liberty doesn't bring people together. People's pathetic little weaknesses like ENVY are firmly in the way. And they're too stupid and too busy coveting other people and their possessions to see it. They're WILLINGLY stupid and ignorant.

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