RIP Kobe Bryant

So what's Barkley and Shaq's excuse?

 

Watched some Kobe interview, think it was after his last game and damn he was an interesting guy with his singular drive to excel and his multi-linguistic abilities. He was unique and it’s so weird to think he’s gone.

 

https://pagesix.com/2020/02/06/gayl...-viral-interview-about-kobe-bryant-rape-case/

I find this interesting because many credit King's interview with R Kelly as the reason CBS rebuilt their morning show around her.

 

King's questions of Leslie about Kobe's rape case were on point. Asking a female friend of Kobe's about the case and following it up was actually quality work.

 

When someone as popular as Kobe Bryant is charged with sexual assault, it is better for the rest of us to shut up and say nothing.

It took about forty women to come forward with allegations about Bill Cosby before other women started to question it.

 

Still to soon to talk about Kobe?

 

Has Ms. King apologized about asking the questions or does she stand by her questions?

 

If the point of the Leslie interview was Kobe - absolutely. If Leslie was pushing something else and the only reason they had her on was to ask about Kobe - that's kind of sleazy. Though I know PR people will also say "Sure you can ask about her friendship with Kobe" if it gets a booking.

 

“I think the media should be more respectful at this time,” Leslie said. “It’s like, if you’ve had questions about it, you’ve had many years to ask him about it.”

Leslie makes a great point. The agony that the sports journalism world is experiencing right now over how to write Bryant’s obituary is a self-inflicted wound. It’s their own fault. The sports journalism world was complicit, along with the rest of the star athlete industrial complex, in letting that episode fade into obscurity....

Leslie: “I mean, it went to trial.” King: “It was dismissed because the victim refused to testify.”

The more accurate statement would be: The victim withdrew her cooperation after she was bullied, humiliated, exposed and shamed by Bryant’s defense team and a complicit press corps.

Bryant’s lawyers leaked information about her mental health to reporters, repeated her name over and over again in open court (so much so that the judge admonished them) and inaccurately suggested during the same hearing that she’d slept with three other men on the day she reported the assault — for which they were also admonished, although it didn’t change the headlines. Newspapers named her. And their editors suggested on this very website that doing so was the ethical and fair thing to do.


With Kobe Bryant, journalists are paying for their sins of the past - Poynter

 

When was the last time Kobe was confronted with a question about the trial? I do think it's odd that after someone dies people pull out the ledger and figure they need to do a full audit of their life. I guess that's what bugs me the most about these stories. The trial wasn't a rumor - asking a friend in mourning to justify their friendship seems weird to me. Now if someone you were friends with dies in a shootout and you are seeking insight and context into who they were? Sure. But it wasnt' like Kobe was a recluse since the trial, though I'm not sure if he made that topic a no-go for interviews.

 

I think that’s the point of the article. Journalists and sports writers let it go once it was over. It’s almost like it was too embarrassing to discuss. Kobe came out of it quiet at first then he became lionized through and after death. I get the people who are pissed that people are bringing it up after his death when they didn’t have the guts to bring it up while he was alive. He skated through the #metoo uprising. Spike Lee wears a tribute to him at the Oscars, would he be so gracious to a Woody Allen?

 

King's interview was quite long. She did eventually ask a few questions about Kobe's rape case, a couple of them tough questions. This thing blew up because CBS clipped the most difficult question and released it as a tweet, completely removed from all the surrounding questions and context. Asked cold, that was a head-hunting question, but in the context of an extended discussion it reads very differently. That's the main reason that King got dragged, the way it was handled by CBS. Add in that she had no idea what CBS had done or what was happening until Twitter blew up in her face.