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Kobe
Those of you who read this website regularly (that would be you, you and... oh, yeah, you. I didn't see you there) will notice that I didn't do an article about Kobe Bryant's arrest for sexual assault.
I have this week's fan sign referring to the incident, but in a way that (I feel, at least) doesn't implicate Kobe or make fun of him directly (the joke being -- and, of course, explaining a joke means killing it, but here goes -- that a particular person was such a big Kobe fan that he wanted to provide the Lakers All-Star with an alibi in the form of a ballpark sign).
The reason for this is that Kobe's case is, as I write this, ongoing. No one's sure if he'll be charged, no one's sure if the young woman who accused him is telling the truth or not; no one's sure what in the world is going on.
In writing a website such as this one, a person obviously has to make fun of certain people at certain times. I try to do it without using personal attacks, or anything that I would consider below the belt. I've called Barry Bonds a jerk, I've intimated that Bud Selig and Gary Bettman are ineffectual commissioners who are failing to address their sports' biggest problems, I've said called several members of the St. Louis Rams "overrated white guys." This stuff, I think, comes with the territory.
But I didn't want to do anything about Kobe, especially without knowing what was going on. There's a line. To paraphrase that old saying, I don't know exactly where the line is, but I know what crosses it and what doesn't. At least as far as my articles are concerned.
True, I did something about Kirby Puckett's trial for sexual assault. But the angle I took was to look at how disappointed Minnesotans were in the sullying of Kirby's good name (whether justified or not), to the point where they'd rather just not talk about it. I did a joke about Randall Simon hitting the sausage in Milwaukee this weekend, but I tried to refrain from name-calling, as he obviously did something silly and stupid rather than malicious, and he expressed what seemed like honest regret.
I'm all for being "controversial" ("Chicago Area Whites Uneasy About Hating Kordell Stewart," from Issue One, remains my favorite article yet), but I figured that piling on Kobe would just be mean-spirited at this point (because God knows his temperament is directly associated with what I say about him on this website).
Anyway. That's why I didn't make fun of Kobe this week.
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