Donald Sterling: The Elderly Cuckold's grasp for dignity

Dodger slugger Matt Kemp ($160 million contract) and V. Stiviano, mistress
of octogenarian billionaire Donald Sterling, on her Instagram account:
What do you think she wants you to imagine about their relationship?

Reviewing the illegally recorded tape of part of 81-year-old billionaire Donald Sterling's conversation with his young mistress V. Stiviano, I'm reminded of old stories of elderly cuckolds, like Chaucer's The Miller's Tale and who knows how many comic operas.

Donald Sterling

We don't have the beginning of the conversation, which would presumably be very interesting. The parts of the recording leaked (no doubt by Team Stiviano) have the flavor of a well-rehearsed entrapment.

V: ... I'm sorry, sweetie. Everything was OK and perfect. 

DS. I'm just telling you, you told me you were going to remove it, so Dennis, the second [that?] Dennis looked at me and made that comment.

What was "that comment" that the second Dennis made that so wounded the 80-year-old sugar daddy?

That comment appears to have been made by Dennis regarding Donald Sterling's mistress's predilection for posting on social media pictures of herself with famous black athletes and celebrities. Why in the world would an octogenarian object to his arm candy advertising herself to the world as consorting constantly without him with famous black athletes? What implication could Dennis have drawn from Ms. Stiviano's Instagram pictures about the old fool's ability to keep his youthful and expensive girlfriend sexually satisfied?

V: ... I'm sorry you feel that way, honey. I don't know how this conversation even came about. You were telling me how people called you, and how they mentioned certain things to you, and how it bothers you.

"Mentioned certain things" ... Ms. Viviano's lawyer appears to have done an excellent job at coaching his client at how to lead the billionaire in this surreptitiously-recorded conversation so that the public won't be able to figure out what they are talking about when it is leaked.

DS: Can't you just say, "The few Instagrams, I won't, I just ..."

Next, the golddigger, not the billionaire, introduces the subject of black people into the part of the conversation she's released.

V: Honey, if it makes you happy, I will remove all of the black people from my Instagram.

DS: Thank you. You said that before, you said, "I understand." 

Obviously, there was a lot of previous discussion between these two that we aren't being let in on by Team Stiviano.

V: ... I DID remove the people that were independently on my Instagram that are black. 

What does "independently" mean here? My guess would be that he's okay with her posting pictures of herself with some famous athlete or hip-hop star as long as Sterling is in the picture with the two younger people, but he's not okay with her posting pictures suggesting to the world that she's hanging out with these famous studs without him in the picture.

DS: You said that before, you said, "I understand." Then why did you start saying that you didn't? You just said that you didn't remove them. You didn't remove every -- " 

V: I didn't remove Matt Kemp and Magic Johnson, but I thought -- I thought Matt Kemp is mixed, and he was OK, just like me. He's lighter and whiter than me.

Rihanna-Matt Kemp

Matt Kemp is the L.A. Dodger slugger who formerly dated pop star Rihanna (until he had an off-season in 2010, after which he got his mojo back and was runner-up in the MVP voting in 2011 when he led the NL with 39 dingers).

In other words, Kemp swings some heavy lumber in the Los Angeles Celebrity Sexual Marketplace. If I were an octogenarian giving some tart two Bentleys and a Ferrari to be my girlfriend, I'd know what people would think when they see pictures on her Instagram of her being friendly with the 6'4" 215-pound 29-year-old Kemp without her elderly sponsor in the frame.

In the picture at the top of the post taken from Stiviano's Instagram page, she's jamming her right breast into Kemp's ribcage as if the two are in the throes of a grand affair. (Kemp looks mildly surprised.)

DS: Okay. 

V: I met his mother. 

DS: You think I'm a racist, and wouldn't --  

V: I don't think you're a racist. 

DS: Yes you do. Yes you do. 

V: I think you, you -- 

DS: Evil heart. 

V: I don't think so. I think you have an amazing heart, honey. I think the people around you have poison mind, and have a way of thinking.

The people around him, such as the mysterious Second Dennis, "have poison mind, and have a way of thinking." What does that mean? My guess would be that the people around Donald Sterling think he's not keeping his hot young mistress satisfied in the sack, so she's getting some on the side with the jocks and rappers she hangs out with in her Instagram pictures. 

DS: It's the world! You go to Israel, the blacks are just treated like dogs. 

V: So do you have to treat them like that too? 

DS: The white Jews, there's white Jews and black Jews, do you understand? 

V: And are the black Jews less than the white Jews? 

DS: A hundred percent, fifty, a hundred percent. 

V: And is that right? 

DS: It isn't a question—we don't evaluate what's right and wrong, we live in a society. We live in a culture. We have to live within that culture. 

V: But shouldn't we take a stand for what's wrong?

Note to reality show producers considering Miss V.: she'll probably require more than one take to read the lines right.

V: And be the change and the difference? 

Did Obama write this for her?

DS: I don't want to change the culture, because I can't. It's too big and too [unknown]. 

V: But you can change yourself. 

DS: I don't want to change. If my girl can't do what I want, I don't want the girl. I'll find a girl that will do what I want! Believe me. I thought you were that girl—because I tried to do what you want. But you're not that girl. ... 

Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss would have returned her to the agency for a new, improved version a long time ago. But Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is the man who employed Elgin Baylor as his general manager for 22 years until Elgin was 74, during which they had 20 losing seasons. Buss employed Jerry West as his general manager and dated a whole bunch of 22-year-old blondes. Donald Sterling employed Elgin Baylor as the brains of his basketball operation and dated Miss Subic Bay 1999.

The next part sounds like a Larry David sitcom:

V: It's like saying, "Let's just persecute and kill all of the Jews." 

DS: Oh, it's the same thing, right? 

V: Isn't it wrong? Wasn't it wrong then? With the Holocaust? And you're Jewish, you understand discrimination. 

DS: You're a mental case, you're really a mental case. The Holocaust, we're comparing with— 

V: Racism! Discrimination. 

DS: There's no racism here. If you don't want to be... walking... into a basketball game with a certain... person, is that racism?

Well played, V. You were coached well.

Okay, here's my guess at what the Back Story is before this bit of conversation. Imagine Larry David, even richer but 20 years older and feebler.

Warning: Pure Speculation, but this makes a lot of psychological sense: Sterling's aged male ego was crushed by comments from other men, such as the Second Dennis, about how, when he's not around, his girlfriend is sure seen a lot by herself in the company of famous studs like Matt Kemp. And, you know, Don, people will talk.

So, Sterling tells her to delete from her public Instagram various pictures of herself and some celebrity swordsmen in which he doesn't appear.

At some point, maybe, she points out that all the guys Sterling is objecting to are black. (I don't know that, but everybody else in the world is assuming that Sterling brought it up first and I don't see any proof one way or another.) Being an old coot, he eventually admits that she has a point. He says something like society assumes that women who publicly hang out with black jocks and entertainers are having sex with at least one of them, especially if their alternative source of sexual satisfaction is a rich octogenarian.

Her lawyer coaches her to make "blacks" synonymous in their conversations with the concept of the men her boyfriend objects to her being seen with outside of his company. So, she then gets him in the illegally recorded conversation to talk about how society sees "blacks."
   
This could be a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode on HBO in 2034.