When Hugh Grant was caught soliciting a prostitute in 1995, he remarked with characteristic self-deprecating wit that this would be the third paragraph of his obituary. Grant’s quip notwithstanding, we are admonished by our elders never to speak ill of the dead. But “the evil that men do lives after them,” Shakespeare has a cagey Mark Antony observe in “Julius Caesar.” And the press in particular, who write obits for the record, do well to take note of the person in full.
And so it is with the passing of Kobe Bryant — global cultural icon, basketball superstar, legendary Los Angeles Laker, supporter of women’s sports, husband, father, friend, mentor, idol, opponent, competitor and, in 2003, accused rapist.
That was the first thing I flashed on when I heard he was dead. I’m not a basketball aficionado, but I knew who Bryant was and remember vividly that he was accused of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old worker at The Lodge and Spa in Cordillera, Colorado, where he was staying prior to knee surgery. The prosecutors dropped the case when she refused to testify. A civil suit was settled privately, and Bryant issued what was in effect an apology. While this may not have been the third paragraph of the many obituaries/appreciations on Bryant that appeared in the likes of The New York Times and the “PBS NewsHour,” it was certainly explored in later paragraphs that usually began with the transitional sentence “off the court, Bryant’s legacy was more complicated.”
Felicia Sonmez, who covers national politics for The Washington Post, was more direct, tweeting a 2016 Daily Beast article about the case. For that, she received death threats and epithets and was put on administrative leave by her newspaper. (She’s been reinstated but has called out her company to explain its actions.
Managing editor Tracy Grant said Sonmez’s tweets were “ill-timed,” given the rawness of the grief in the immediate aftermath of Bryant’s death Jan. 26 in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, that took eight other lives, including that of his 13-year-old daughter Gianna. But a reporter has to tell the complete story. As Sonmez wrote: “Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality, even if that public figure is beloved and that totality unsettling.”