May 3, 2014

"I think Mr. Sterling is being tested right now by a higher power or being and I’m forced to come to his rescue because he can’t rescue himself."

Says V. Stiviano, interviewed by Barbara Walters:



ADDED: "[A] beautiful black model named Jasmine... asked Sterling if she could take a photo with him..."
... and he responded, "I'm not that popular right now. Are you sure?' Jasmine said she was game...

As for how Jasmine feels about Sterling, she says, "It's 2014. I feel that everyone is a little bit racist and comedians joke about it all the time. But yeah, I do think he's racist."

51 comments:

Freeman Hunt said...

I love him like a father figure.

All kinds of fathers out there.

Fritz said...

I could happily go back to the time before I had heard of these two people.

Rosalyn C. said...

Now she claims she is not his girlfriend but an employee getting paid under the table. If Sterling still thinks she is his friend he really is confused.

Ann Althouse said...

Remember that she is being sued by Sterling's wife and that she has a financial interest in preserving wealth that she has acquired.

But I wonder what kind of legal advice she has. Why did she say that Sterling is paying her "off the books"?!

chickelit said...

"Personal Assistant"?

Who made up that one?

chickelit said...

I care more about the details of the tapings than her needs and wishes.

Does she talk about those details?

traditionalguy said...

is this the a Happy Hooker redux? She really loves her work.

Sterling seemed to be under her power to make that confessional tape. He believe he trusted her for her projection of a merciful personality and her assertion of a connection to God. He fell for her good faith despite his imminent execution.

Michael K said...

This looks to me like a setup with Magic Johnson angling to get the Clippers at a fire sale price.

Nothing like setting the dopes atwitter.

rhhardin said...

Derb comes to the defense, chiefly (as althouse commenters have done) by asking what kind of idiots are making a big deal out of it.

I don't even think Sterling's a racist. He likes blacks. He just thinks other people don't, and doesn't want his mistress obviously dating one because it ruins his reputation.

Let blacks clean up their sexual reputations and he'd be fine with it.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

And if I can milk a few bucks and fifteen minutes of fame out of it, so much the better. Turds float, who knew?

Anonymous said...

All kinds of daughters out there too. Goneril comes to mind.

Rob said...

Jeez, Barbara Walters versus V. Stiviano. There's a battle of mental giants. When is some enterprising journalist going to answer the question we're all asking: what does the V stand for?

Lydia said...

V. (aka Vanessa): “One day, I will become president of the United States of America."

Move over, Hillary!

madAsHell said...

what does the V stand for?

I think I saw the V. elaborated at Vivian.

Barbara Walters always seems to be advancing the narrative.

David said...

As usual, there is more to this story than appears on the surface or in the shorthand summaries. Hard to tell what that more is based on this interview. The heart wants what it wants. Who knows what her heart wants. I sense it is more than just money. But it is easy for a man to be misled by an attractive seemingly distressed woman, even on videotape.

David said...

I love to make fun of Barbara Walters, but that actually is a very good interviewing job.

William said...

She's his right hand. Insert joke about carpal tunnel syndrome. An eighty one year old man with prostrate cancer. That's a day's work.......Who released the tapes and why were they released? She sounds like she wants to be remembered in the will.....It's a good story with many pages left to turn.

Titus said...

I love her hats.

rhhardin said...

Picasso kept up interest in his models until age 80, when the critical neuron finally stopped firing.

Illuninati said...

I was prepared to hate her as a blackmailer but she appears to be more than that. I hope Mr. Sterling refrains from apologizing. Apologizing will not help him, it will just strengthen the hatred since it will confirm that everyone who has judged him harshly is correct.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

So people called Sterling to complain about who V. was bringing to Clippers games. We're told only that they were executives and board members. The plot thickens.

The ex-wife and 2 children would also seem to be obvious candidates for making such calls. His daughter Joanna's husband is identified by Wikipedia as an executive with the team.

Silly rabbit, trix are for kids.

n.n said...

The private conversation is not legally actionable. The precedent set by a number of people to merge the private and public space will have its own rewards and consequences. Perhaps by revealing unreported financial transactions, Stiviano hopes to involve the biggest debt collector, IRS, in order to further depress Sterling. Obama has already indicated a peculiar interest in this case.

Ann Althouse said...

Something very wrong with Barbara Walters's upper eyelids. She can't cover the whites above her irises, and it makes her look crazy.

jr565 said...

He's so racist, and yet he hires her as his right hand man/confidante? I thought he didn't want to hang out with black people?
There is more to the story and his persona than is apparanent based on his leaked statements.

khesanh0802 said...

My God, Ann, your right about the eyelids. She's had so many lifts and tucks that she has run out of skin. Does anyone remember why we are supposed to care about Barbara Walters? I am a contemporary and I don't.

Smilin' Jack said...

"I think Mr. Sterling is being tested right now by a higher power or being and I’m forced to come to his rescue because he can’t rescue himself."

Says V. Stiviano, interviewed by Barbara Walters


V., if you're reading this, I hate to be the one to tell you that Mr. Sterling is beyond rescue.

But I might not be....

Ambrose said...

Yes, Mr. Sterling has entered the Twilight Zone.

jr565 said...

Illuminati wrote:
I was prepared to hate her as a blackmailer but she appears to be more than that. I hope Mr. Sterling refrains from apologizing. Apologizing will not help him, it will just strengthen the hatred since it will confirm that everyone who has judged him harshly is correct.

Except she worked for him (or was his mistress) and despite him being so odious. Maybe there's more to him too.
It sounds like she isn't judging him quite as harshly as those judghing him harshly. ANd if he were so odious, I doubt she'd stay working for him for long.

Skeptical Voter said...

Whe woman is an idiot.

jr565 said...

I think she actually does a good job of providing context to the idea of him complaining about her bringing people to the games. It may have come out as "black people" but in the context it was people that higher ups told him were Gangsta types. And he was telling her, as his right hand man, do what you want just don't bring those people to my stadium so it comes back on me. Since you are perceived as my right hand man.

If he was SOOOOO racist, would he really have made HER of all people his right hand man?

Wince said...

"'I'm you're Krazee Eyez Killah', you know, and I'm gonna be like this in the video."

Hagar said...

Aren't all these professional sports leagues in violation of the Civil Rights Amendments?

Perhaps it is just the language being used about their hiring, firing, and trading practices, but it sure sounds like it to me.

Unknown said...

stiviano is gorgeous.

Sam L. said...

She's "forced" to come to his rescue...having provided the recording making his "rescue" "necessary".

I just hate it when I have to use those "" marks.

Talk about your "next 15 minutes of fame/shame/notoriety".

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Based on this interview I think it is fair to say that Sterling has gone somewhat senile. The apparent, and not unreasonable, attempts by the family to break the hold of this woman on Sterling have backfired spectacularly.

Al from Chgo said...

set-up from the get-go...

rcommal said...

Having the flu would be less nauseating. What a bad place in which we're finding ourselves, and by bad place I don't mean (in fact, I only wish I meant!) at a toilet.

rcocean said...

Honestly, there's no one who can replace Babs Walters? isn't she like 100 years old?

She should have been forced into retirement 20 years ago.

She's a female Larry king. And no, that's not a compliment.

rcocean said...

Gorgeous? She looks rather odd. Is Mr. Spock her father?

Of course, maybe she has a killer body. And of who knows what she looks like in real life.

Maybe she looks Gorgeous when compared to Babs Walters.

The Crack Emcee said...

She probably didn't release the tape. Not that cynical and/or savvy.

Anonymous said...

The mystery this entire time is who were these other people whose opinion he courted? This vast, faceless conspiracy of board members, or was it white Israelis, that cared that she hung with black people at..chortle...basketball games.

Now I don't think there are any other people pressuring him.

He made it up.

John Stodder said...

"I believe God has its purpose."

Boinnnng.

Xmas said...

It is a little suspicious that Magic Johnson is the person in the troublemaking photo and is also the person working with former junk bond king Michael Milken to buy the Clippers. It could be just a coincidence.

In any case, Sterling is an idiot. Every thing happening here is caused by his ego. A pretty girl recording his every thought for him while he talks about the right people for this girl to be seen with so it doesn't hurt his reputation. Werner Herzog could make a documentary about this and simply end it with a bunch of people listening to these tapes with grim looks on their faces. The end result for both Sterling and Ms. Stiviano will be about the same.

cubanbob said...

Remember that she is being sued by Sterling's wife and that she has a financial interest in preserving wealth that she has acquired.

But I wonder what kind of legal advice she has. Why did she say that Sterling is paying her "off the books"?!"

Back in the day when the IRS wasn't so political her comment would have been considered a Western Union to the IRS audit division.

John Stodder said...

I'm curious why no one takes her at face value in her claim that she was an assistant. People much less wealthy than Sterling have personal assistants. She wouldn't necessarily work for the Clippers or for his real estate company. "Off the books" might in this case mean she worked for the individual and was paid from a household account. Just because she's sort of a babe doesn't mean that they're necessarily sleeping together ; and all of his racist comments to her on the tape would work just as plausibly as comments being made to an assistant. We also need not assume that she is the one who released the tape. It might've been one of Sterling's other employees, selling this newsworthy audio just for the money, or out of revenge against a notoriously horrible boss. In short the slut-shaming seems premature.

Nichevo said...

No, John, I would say full steam ahead. In what Stieg Larsson novel universe is she not the one who betrayed him?

CWJ said...

John stodder @5:17,

Interesting theory. I seem to recall that her compensation included $1.8MM toward the purchase of her home, a Ferrari, rwo Bentleys, and some fourth vehicle which make I don't remember. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Ford Focus.

I obviously chose the wrong profession, and someone needs tell all the other personal assistants how grossly underpaid they are.

John Stodder said...

Could well be that she's the one who leaked the tape, but it's just interesting how, knowing nothing, so many disbelieve her in the face of her denials. Is that typical? We don't know who else is out there in Sterling's twisted life who might have an even stronger motive to inflict his own words on him publicly. We just assume we know enough to know it's got to be her.

chickelit said...

Innocent until proven guilty is a legal standard in a court of law, but it rarely applies in the court of public opinion, no matter the politics involved.

chickelit said...

To illustrate, consider George Zimmerman who was found not guilty in a court of law. A significant fraction of the population either (1) still considers him guilty or (2) considers the jurors to be hopelessly biased. Their "court of public opinion convicted him before his trial.

I would be interested to know John Stodder's opinion on the Zimmerman trial in order to rule out racial bias in his opinions.

Nichevo said...

Okay John we're waiting, give us your alternate theory of the crime.