The media strung up the Los Angles Clippers coach Donald Sterling by his thumbs and excoriated him unmercifully for days on end. The front pages were swept clear of everything but Sterling's crimes.

And what were these misdeeds? Heinous acts of brutality? Molesting young girls? Fraud? Thievery? No, worse than all these.

Sterling was guilty of choosing his own friends. Compounding this infraction were his thought crimes. His opinions did not follow the social directives of the Washington Politburo.

Sterling's girlfriend, V. Stiviano, who describes herself as a black Hispanic, made a recording they had about Sterling's attitude toward blacks. TMZ Sports got the tape (it's not saying how) and posted it on its web site.

Here are some quotes in which Sterling juxtaposes black culture with while culture.

Stiviano: What wrong with black people?

Sterling: There's nothing wrong with minorities, they're fabulous, fabulous. [But] There's a culture. People feel certain things. Hispanics feel certain things toward blacks. Blacks feel certain things toward other groups. I'm living in a culture and I have to live within that culture. So that's the way it is.

That was enough.. It was time to rake Sterling over hot coals. The press and public officials stood in line to beat Sterling like a piñata as do blindfolded children at a birthday party.

The Times: He is “exposed as a gargoyle, disgorging racial and sexual animosities as to take the breath away.” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver fined him $2.5 million, ousted the 33-year owner of the Clippers from the NBA, and banned him for life in the association. NAACP President Leon Jenkins rescinded its plans to give Sterling its 2014 Humanitarian Award. (He was awarded it in 2009.)

But the crimes and misdemeanors of Sterling are common to our species and, in fact, to all species; we obey nature's law: likes tend to gravitate to likes.

When this writer was a very young boy he liked nothing better than to go to Chinatown. It was a wonderland of exotic restaurants with storefront windows displaying roasted ducks. I could not afford duck, but noodles and vegetables with chopsticks was almost as good. And the narrow, winding streets were crowded with tiny shops full of orientalia that I also could not afford but freely spent my time admiring.

Bordering Chinatown were self-assembled communities, not ghettos, of Italians, Germans, and Poles. No one thought this as evil. On the contrary, if these communities were homogenized, the distinctive culture of each would be lost.

On the other hand, when separate groups are forced into close association, there is animosity. Hence, the rancor between Muslims and Christians, Tamils and Sinhalese, Cambodians and Vietnamese, and blacks and whites.

But if people are left to themselves, they will sort out differences in a way that minimizes ethnic/racial friction. It is when the government legally enforces segregation, as it did in the South, or forces integration in an attempt to right the wrongs of the past, that hostility flourishes.

The nuttiness of governmental social engineering reminds one of past experiments with cultural manipulation to solve social problems: Russia and Stalin's country-wide collectivization of farms, or Germany and Hitler's purification of the Germany race, or China and Mao's refashioning the Chinese economy to a communistic ideal, or Cambodia and Pol Pot's efforts to create an agrarian utopia, or Italy and Mussolini's attempt to recapture the glory of ancient Rome.

Perhaps we are coming down with our own brand of nuttiness when a minor incident with racial overtones becomes major coast-to-coast news. This prompted Pat Buchanan to ask in his April 29 column, Is America Still A Serious Country?

Rather than being caught up in the tyranny of the times maybe it's just better to say, so what. When someone's coterie disturbs our sensibilities or voices an opinion that differs from ours, just say, so what.

Beautiful words those, so what, neither defensive nor condemnatory. It grants to others the same rights we value for ourselves: the right to associate with whom we please and to express opinions that others find objectionable. It's called freedom. Isn't that what America is all about?

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA

scroggins@epix.net