It has been two weeks since that fateful January day when Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others – including a couple of GiGi’s teammates and a helicopter pilot lost their lives in a helicopter crash outside of Los Angeles.
It was news that sent shockwaves throughout the world – both inside and outside of sports given how far Kobe Bryant’s reach was beyond sports.
Most of the media coverage since has been in remembrance of him, extolling his NBA success, thinking about how much more he had to give as an ambassador of the game and pondering how much of a force GiGi would have been in the WNBA.
Then – one interview flipped the whole conversation upside down. Gayle King of CBS sat down for an interview with former Los Angeles Sparks great (and friend of Kobe’s) Lisa Leslie. A topic that came up – the 2003 rape allegation that stemmed from an allegation he sexually assaulted a 19-year old woman in Eagle, Colorado.
.@WNBA legend @LisaLeslie told @GayleKing that Kobe Bryant’s legacy is “not complicated” for her despite his 2003 rape accusation.
“I don’t think it’s something that we should keep hanging over his legacy.” https://t.co/qj6MVvOaqX pic.twitter.com/9qtVORobLO
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) February 4, 2020
It seemed as if it was a relatively innocent line of questioning on King’s part. There is no getting around that while he made steps in his life to mature and grow into a man from that 2003 transgression that it is an element of his legacy, like it or not.
Because of Leslie’s friendship with the late Bryant, it had to be an uneasy bit of questioning for her to be asked about that 2003 story.
Instead, it was not taken as so innocent by other celebrities – many of whom are black men who believed King asked these questions out of contempt for other African-American men and would never do so of a white man such as a Harvey Weinstein or even a Ben Roethlisberger.
It has become so bad that she is even receiving death threats and is “not doing well,” says King’s best friend Oprah Winfrey.
.@Oprah emotionally responds to backlash her friend Gayle King received over King’s recent interview about Kobe Bryant with WNBA legend Lisa Leslie: “She is not doing well because she has now death threats.” pic.twitter.com/M8HrCp8vTr
— TODAY with Hoda & Jenna (@HodaAndJenna) February 7, 2020
King herself even reacted on social media where she feels she was set up by CBS.
My perspective (1/2) pic.twitter.com/tUYK0yGh9q
— Gayle King (@GayleKing) February 6, 2020
(2/2) pic.twitter.com/Gojxatll7y
— Gayle King (@GayleKing) February 6, 2020
Whether or not she was set up by CBS is neither here nor there. Whether or not one disagrees with King asking Leslie those questions is neither here nor there. What is a problem is when the vitriol and anger to King’s interview with Leslie spins so far out of control that it gets to her receiving death threats and having to travel with security.
All because she was a journalist doing her job.
Sometimes as a journalist, you have to ask the hard questions. That was a hard question for King to clearly ask and it was a hard question for Leslie to answer. But it is an honest question.
So many people are reacting to that part of the interview as if that was the only thing Leslie was asked about. King and Leslie talked a variety of topics, including how Bryant studied Michael Jordan, what his loss meant to women’s basketball, his daughter Gianna and how his passing touched people who never even met him. It was not a hitpiece where King only asked Leslie about what allegedly went down in 2003.
But because CBS posted it as the teaser to the full interview, King’s work (that was lauded when she grilled R. Kelly on his transgressions) is now being put under a microscope.
We can do better than to completely “cancel” an African-American woman journalist simply because she asked questions maybe these same detractors would not have asked if they conducted an interview about Kobe’s legacy. We can do better than allowing the discussion about his legacy turn into one that has overtones of misogyny and disdain for Black women.
The irony is that many of these same people claimed the #GirlDad mantra after Elle Duncan told a story on SportsCenter of how Kobe was proud to be a father of girls. These same people also mourned Gianna Bryant’s death as well. So it is okay to mourn the death of one young African-American woman, but we did not like what another African-American woman had to say about our hero, so we are going to make her the victim of cancel culture.
Women of all colors, cultures, creeds and backgrounds can relate to the vomit-worthy misogyny that has come King’s way in the fallout from the Lisa Leslie interview. This especially applies to sports journalism as Leslie herself is a co-host of CBS Sports Network’s “We Need to Talk” show that features an all-woman panel (something sports needs more, not less, of).
A woman does not even have to say something men disagree with to have this torrent of misogyny aimed in her direction. All it takes is for that woman to be on television or radio, have a byline in a newspaper or at an online publication, or have her own platform and the response from men is usually assuming that the woman or women slept with someone on a team or at a network to get her job.
Snoop Dogg being one of those who lashed out at King on social media is especially disappointing as he, like Kobe was, has emerged as a supporter of the WNBA. All you saw last year on Twitter were videos of him and Breanna Stewart and he was all over Las Vegas for last year’s All-Star Game, including partying with Liz Cambage.
It is already hard enough for woman journalists (especially woman journalists of color) to thrive in male dominated professions like sports, entertainment and politics. It is already hard enough for women to have the courage to speak out when they feel wronged. The reaction to King’s interview is only a microcosm of why it only is so hard when we should be making strides to make (sports) journalism more diverse in terms of color and gender.
Yes, Kobe Bryant was a lot of things – but Jesus was not one of them. He was an imperfect figure (as we all are) that made strides to better himself as a man as he evolved into his 30s and 40s. Gayle King is imperfect. Lisa Leslie is imperfect. Oprah Winfrey is imperfect. And all of the celebrities that are calling King out of her name are imperfect as well.
King is going to continue to shine as a journalist. She will get past this and emerge stronger than ever and was not trying to denigrate Kobe Bryant’s legacy with the questions she asked in that interview.
If anything – the misogynistic mindset that is at the heart of why Snoop Dogg, Lil Boosie, 50 Cent and others have displayed to King – is what is really tarnishing the Mamba’s legacy.
Little do they know – they are also hurting their own legacies too.
