The Kobe Debacle

Maybe the "capturee" was fat and sassy and liked to bounce her lovers off the wall and the mattress!

snood--

I know what you mean. I imagine most wives of exceptionally wealthy men allow the money/lifestyle to factor in with their reasons to stay or leave. I hope there are some women, who would stay with their husband even if he lost everything.

Prenups and character, or lack of same, figure in heavily.

Still, cheating these days can amount to giving the wife HIV. Lots to ponder.

I probably would've high-tailed it to get an HIV screen, even before I said anything. (Is it still a nine month process to know you haven't acquired HIV?) I do think adultery can be overcome in a loving marriage.

sofia - why would a man with a beautiful wife (not to mention everything else he has to lose) do this? Surely it isn't hard to imagine this happening if you combine a 24 year old with 24 year old hormones, a willing young girl, and 15 minutes of bad judgement.

Yep, snood.
I understood it--and agree with what you've said. I just hated explaining it to my daughter.

Beauty has little to do with fidelity. All the things that make a man or a woman feel more confident that 'it can't happen to them' are faulty.

It can happen to anyone, for no good reason.

Goofy as it may seem, I give those guys more latitude in extramarital affairs, because they are constant targets of cheap women. Even if they say no to a hundred women, there are hundreds more lined up, waiting. This phenomena HAS GOT to do something snakey to their personas.
(That comment related to cheating--not to sexual abuse.)

I hear you - about trying to explain to a child. Like when the pres (Clinton) was with a girl about his daughter's age in the white house, or like when racial hatred rears its head - these are things difficult to explain to a child. I have never liked Kobe Bryant, so this all is a learning experience for me - lessons in fairness under the law, lessons in not judging...

Has anyone gotten whiff of a leak of the "victim's" identity yet?

Isn't American justice like Australia's and Great Britain's - in that there is a presumption of innocence?

Your basketballer, or whatever he is, doesn't have to prove anything - the prosecution has the burden of proof. Because rape is one of the few crimes which mimics consensual, indeed desired, behaviour, it is amongst the hardest of crimes to convict on - and, if this young woman is crying wolf for some reason, she is very foolish, because her experience in court is likely to be awful, as well as for the obvious reasons of morality etc. Many rape victims describe the court process as being more traumatic than the rape itself - so much so that, as someone who has worked as a therapist in this area, I would now be quite unlikely to report it if I were raped.

As an outsider, I find the way the US handles prosecutions - the publicity, the press conferences (I understand the DA's actually get in front of the media and give press conferences?), the warring media circus - incomprehensible, and most conducive to creating an atmosphere in which fairness at trial becomes even more difficult than it normally is. I mean, with high-profile cases, the media will frenzy anyway, but for the protagonists actually to FEED this stuff?! I shake my head in wonder.

Anyway, I am just a furriner, and we all think our systems the norm... So it goes.

No, dlowan - a lot of us natives think the "American way" of hype, hype, frenzy and more hype, is weird and stupid. No matter how long I live here, I still have shake my head sometimes at how we shoot justice in the foot, in the interest of rating numbers.

One last comment: I think it's a lose-lose for Kobe - even if he's found innocent of the charge. c.i.

Well, if he's found innocent, the "lose" will be a few less millions a year, and a smudge on his reputation. Considering what real problems can be in the real world, I will find it hard to have much sympathy if that's the case.

Agree. He shud'a kept his zipper zipped. Cheat'n on his wife is not acceptable in my books, but that's my ethics. c.i.

It's his ethics also c.i. - now!

He had an ethics transfusion?

Better than an ethicsectomy, I guess!

He had an ethics transfusion?

Better than an ethicsectomy, I guess!

I thought he was gonna get down on one knee and start singing Barry White songs to his wife at the press conference.

OK, now - another cultural thing - that press conference, and the ritual humiliation/confession/I love my wife stuff, with the wife, presumably, looking noble and forgiving and loving and such - what is that about?

What is it supposed to achieve?

I mean, with Clinton I could sort of see it - he was not facing a trial, as such - but why the dog and pony show for Kobe? A simple "I am innocent of rape but guilty of foolishness" or some such, perhaps - but are not the tears and the apologies a private matter?

Image, baby, image. Worth a LOT. They want people to think of him apologizing to his lovely wife, not the mug shot.

I think we might be forging new territory in the realm of tastelessness. At least I've never experienced quite this kind of production around an accused person.

Really? I was thinking the opposite... here we go AGAIN.

Oooweee y'all. This chat has moved into a whole different realm in the last 24 hours. It's like real-time revelations. Our feelings and opinions change as time goes on and info is shared. It's really kind of great.

We've eased into why he would cheat on his beautiful, young wife and I want to share one thing I learned several years ago. In many cases, cheating has absolutely nothing to do with the wife. It has nothing to do with how much he adores her, how attracted he is to her, how beautiful and hot she is, having sex outside of his marriage is completely separate from his marriage. It's just something men in his position DO. Because one, it's there and two, they can.

I hear ya Soz. Here we go AGAIN.