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My friends in Eagle report that it's almost impossible to walk down the street, or even skulk down an alley in the dark of night, without being cornered by people wielding cameras and microphones. At last report, the town's population had grown by nearly 10 percent on account of the media invasion.
Since they're all on expense accounts, that should be good for the local economy, although no one I know there seems pleased by this development.
I don't even know why the national media need to send
reporters to the site. In all such accounts from rural
towns (we endured a little of it in Salida in May of 2002
after a pipe bomb from a traveling bomber was found in a
local mailbox), the place is invariably a sleepy
hamlet,
the local sheriff or police chief is
taciturn
or laconic,
the locals gather for
coffee every morning at the Whatever Diner,
and it's
the kind of place that time seems to have passed by
until the Story Du Jour erupted.
They could contrive this stereotypical swill without
ever leaving the office, and if they needed some visuals,
perhaps the old Mayberry R.F.D.
set is still
available as a background -- it's what they really want to
use anyway.
Just why this case -- the People of Colorado v. Kobe Bryant -- has attracted so much attention is beyond me. If it goes to trial, then evidence and sworn testimony will be presented. Bryant will have the right to confront his accuser in open court.
And until then, why all the attention? What possible difference could the young woman's background make now, and why should I or anyone else care? Is the announcement that she once wanted to be on some moronic television program going to make the district attorney drop the charges and apologize for bothering a wealthy celebrity?
This case has energized the old newsroom discussion about publishing the names of rape victims. In my days as editor of the Mirror, the newspaper at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley more than 30 years ago, there were rapes on and near the campus.
We may have been a bunch of left-leaning substance abusers, but we did try to work with the police when writing about rapes.
The police said they can't solve a rape case and arrange for the arrest and prosecution of the rapist unless they know about the crime, which means it has to be reported. And in their experience, women were reluctant to report rapes if they knew their names would be published before the case went to trial.
Women on the newspaper staff agreed with the police analysis when I asked. And so rapes were reported differently than other crimes. But no burglary or bar-fight victim ever complained about being identified then.
And at newspaper jobs since then, I never heard a complaint about not publishing the name of someone who reported a rape, even though we generally published the names of the people who reported every other type of crime.
But I never had to make publishing decisions when the
accused was rich and famous, and that seems to change the
equation. Tom Leykis, a radio talk show host in Los
Angeles, has named the accuser. Apparently, he believes
it's unfair for her to be somewhat anonymous when a
basketball star's name is being bandied about: What
about the stigma of Kobe Bryant being accused?
Well, what about it? Take him at his word as to what happened, that the sex was consensual, and he's still an adulterer with some stupid behavior that ought to disqualify him from future service as a role model or as an endorser of products other than condoms.
But that's not how some people see it. One worshipful
website explains that the true sports fan stands by the
side of one of the all-time greats until given valid
reasons to the contrary.
Wouldn't a true sports fan
just worry about
athletic performance -- whether they guy makes his plays,
rather than what he does off the court?
There are writers whose work I admire -- call me a fan if you want -- but their skill does not inspire me to want to go on a bender with Hunter S. Thompson or admire all things German like H.L. Mencken. The same holds for various poets, sculptors, painters, potters, film directors, comedians, musicians, etc.
Just because they do good work doesn't mean that they are exemplary human beings of superlative moral character, or that they need to be. One can enjoy a Keith Richards riff and not feel compelled to argue that all that heroin talk in the 1970s was baseless rumor.
But maybe that's what makes a true sports fan
different from the rest of us. And there sure seem to be a
lot of them, all unwilling to let justice take its
course.
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