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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Names are different,
plot is the sameIt's a huge story in the press. A black man accused of raping a white woman. It's a case of "he says/she says." Can the defendant can get a fair trial in the tiny, mostly white town? And, although everyone in town knows who the victim is, her name is withheld by the press to protect her honor while the defendant's reputation is ruined, and he could be heading to prison for most of the rest of his life.
It's not the Kobe Bryant case. It's the Tom Robinson case. The town is Maycomb, Ala., in the 1930s, and Robinson's trial took place in the pages of Harper Lee's chilling novel "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Other than Lee's character being an impoverished field hand and Bryant being a multimillionaire sports superstar, the cases are similar, at least what we know about them so far. And that's what's so disturbing about the Bryant case. He's a black man who supposedly "snapped" just minutes after checking into a resort hotel in Cordillera, Colo., and raped a helpless white female hotel employee.
Forget Bryant's reputation as a level-headed professional, an astute businessman and a charitable contributor to the community ... what this case tells us is that in the eyes of some, black men are just sexually driven beasts, incapable of controlling their savage instincts at the sight of milky white femininity.
LET'S HAVE A reality check here. What seems more probable: That Bryant, a revered sports figure who has dated some of the most beautiful women on the planet (and married one of them) would suddenly go sexually off the rails, chuck his marriage, career and freedom to rape a hotel clerk? Or does it make more sense that a star-struck, small-town girl with visions of entertainment grandeur (she tried out for "American Idol"), whose ego is battered after being dropped by her boyfriend, agrees to a sexual tryst with a famous basketball player only to regret it later and cry rape? (Forget the O.J. Simpson comparison. He did beat his wife. Bryant's record is clean.)
In "Mockingbird," Tom Robinson didn't stand a chance at trial because it was assumed that the only thing a black man wanted was to have sex with a white woman and the only thing keeping him from doing it was the KKK and a rope. Robinson was a nobody. He didn't even have a fat contract with the National Cotton Planters Association or endorsements from Yikey! Cotton-picker Gloves. The only thing his lawyer, the fearless Atticus Finch, could do was keep him from getting lynched.
Times have changed. But not that much. The reputation of the white accuser is more important than the defendant's. For the record, the accuser's name is Mayella Ewell. Tom Robinson's accuser. We don't get to know who may be ruining Bryant's life. We've come nowhere, baby. We still kill our mockingbirds.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
