Kobe Bryant dead from Helicopter crash

[EgoDeath]

I was actually pretty shocked when I saw this on the news. I was at a family members house and came up from the basement to go grab more food (the grandparents are amazing cooks), and my cousin, who was also over, was watching CNN and she was like "Dude, Kobe Bryant is fucking dead." It sort of stopped me in my tracks. Bryant was obviously a young guy, in the grand scheme of things. And then hearing his daughter, along with like seven other people, were also dead, was even more horrifying to hear. What a terrible accident.

However... what I'm not understanding is the insane amount of backlash that certain journalists are getting for talking about the fact that Bryant was charged with rape some years ago and actually settled out of court. He was even quoted as saying, "I can now see why she did not feel like the encounter was consensual." So he literally admitted to rape.

While I don't believe that mistakes we've made, or even terrible things we've done, define us entirely as people, I'm not sure why people are giving journalists, like Gayle King for example, such a hard time for bringing up the rape allegations. And like I said, he essentially admitted to raping the girl, so it's not even allegations. He raped someone. Period. Does that mean he held a woman down in an alley and hit her over the head with a pipe? No. But consent isn't always so black and white. That's why it's always important to get a verbal confirmation from your partner that they're comfortable with what's happening. It's also important you make your partner feel safe with you, so that if they are actually uncomfortable with what's going on, they feel safe enough to tell you, or straight up stop you.

So here's the Gayle King interview that somehow stirred up so much controversy:

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So while I sort of get the "it's in poor taste" reaction... I mean... if you're going to talk about the man, you're going to remember that the incident is a part of his history. It was part of his life. Should we never be allowed to say anything negative of the dead, even if the dead did some terrible stuff?

I don't know. I sort of have mixed feelings about it, but at the end of the day, he DID rape a girl. Period. So I really don't get the insane amount of backlash that reporters are getting for talking about that. It's so confusing to me how people get attached to celebrities. It's like, no offense, but this dude didn't even fucking know you. Why are you defending him so much? On that note, I wouldn't waste too much energy trying to tear the guy down either. I simply don't know him. He doesn't know me. His existence simply never occupied that much space in my mind, before or after he passed.

It's a sad story of course and I feel for the family, especially considering the daughter died as well, and I also feel for the families of everyone else who passed. But that sexual assault was something that happened. And while I don't care about sports, he was also, arguably, the greatest basketball player of all time. He influenced millions of people in ways that are unimaginable. So it's not that I think he was some terrible guy. Life is complicated. You're not "good" because you did one good thing or "bad" because you did one bad thing. Humans are more complicated than that; it's just that the mob mentality around defending Kobe, and trying to tear down anyone who criticized him, is very bizarre to me.