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By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch

Donald Sterling, the disgraced Los Angeles Clippers owner, is seeking his 15 minutes of repentance.

Now, in the aftermath of the great American pastime of Celebrities Behaving Badly, Sterling has reached out to the American media to plead his case.

Im asking for forgiveness, he told CNNs Anderson Cooper.

Im not a racist, he added in an interview that will air on Coopers prime-time program Monday night.

Dont fall for his sad act. To put it bluntly, shed no tears for Donald Sterling. He is getting what he deserves. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has officially banned Sterling for life from the NBA and fined him $2.5 million, in the hope of forcing Sterling to sell the team. By the way, Sterling can probably get bids of about $1 billion in a sale of the team, so the NBAs death sentence is not exactly without its rewards.

But even if Silver can shove this storys villain out of the NBA picture, the media will keep Sterlings rotten image alive. In this age of 24/7 news, reputations are made and broken overnight and then sealed forever. Because of the advent of Google /quotes/zigman/30194416/delayed/quotes/nls/goog GOOG +2.16% Wikipedia and YouTube, people are, for better or worse, famous forever.

This is more than the fall of a very rich man of privilege and glamour. He got caught making damning racist comments during a private telephone conversation with a woman who was close to him.

It wasnt as if Sterling could claim he was misquoted or even misinterpreted by reporters. He was, after all, the source of those awful comments, which went viral almost immediately. Its essential to examine why the Sterling case resonated so deeply and decisively.

The saga tells, too, the real story of the American media in 2014. If Sterling really was a victim at all, it is because of his lamentable timing. This scandal came fast on the heels of the Missing Plane, a symbol of international intrigue.

Read more:
Media Blitz: Donald Sterling, as we know him, will live forever