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The Star Power Double Standard

It seems to me that the death of Kobe Bryant is another case study in the cult of personality being the determining factor in the response to that death by the general populace.

Observe an article in the Daily Mail: [1]

Felicia Sonmez, who covers national politics for the (Washington) Post, took to Twitter shortly after the world learned of Bryant’s death along with eight others aboard his private helicopter which crashed outside of Los Angeles.

She posted a link to an April 2016 story from the news site The Daily Beast which carried the headline: ‘Kobe Bryant’s Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story, and the Half-Confession.’

The paper immediately suspended the reporter, and she’s been catching some serious heat on Twitter as well1, I am told.

Would folks be this sensitive to bringing up someone’s imperfections….would we be saying this kind of reaction, this kind of vehement defense, over, let’s say, a homeless man with similar events (in this case, rape) in their past?

We both know the answer is no.

And look… before we go any further, let’s make it clear this is not an attack on Kobe Bryant per se. I am reliably informed and have no doubt that he has done some good things in his personal life as well as being a hell of a basketball player, along with the bad.

The point here is questioning the double standards applied to those with star power. This business is yet another example of exactly that… And this has been discussed before in these spaces. It seems to me more than a little bit dishonest.

We observed the same post-mortem double standard being applied at the passing of Michael Jackson a few years ago. I wrote about that rather extensively here [2], in an article that I took some serious heat for at the time.

In that case, as in this, it seems to me that there’s a good deal of starpower mixed into the reactions… And while a lot of people will point to the differences between the jobless homeless man and Jackson and Bryant… And credibly so I think… I have my doubts that that’s why this double standard is being applied. Rather, I think it is success which drives this difference, of which money is only a part.

As Americans, we tend to prize success more than do several other cultures. As such, we hold the successful to a somewhat different standard, despite giving rather loud lip service to something called equality, which at least in this context, seems ill-defined at best.

I make no suggestions for the cure of this rather disturbing dichotomy because I doubt that a cure can never be achieved.

I simply note it.