The Current: Kobe Bryant Continues to Spark Controversy

In the recent years, athlete Kobe Bryant has been in the media for a plethora of negative reasons.  Bryant is a basketball legend, graduating from high school and entering right away into the NBA.  In 2000, Bryant was at the top of his career.  Starting in 2000, Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal won the Los Angeles Lakers three consecutive NBA championships.  However, Bryant’s feud with O’Neal in 2004, after losing in the NBA Finals, was the start of the player’s bad behavior.  Bryant and O’Neal’s fight was so inane, yet it ended in O’Neal’s departure the following season.
 
It was right around this time that Bryant was accused of sexual assault after having relations with a hotel employee in Colorado.  Prosecutors dropped the case shortly after, due to the accuser’s refusal to testify.  The largess of the claims caused mass media attention, especially because the news broke during the continuous upswing of Bryant’s basketball career.
 

Since those accusations, Bryant’s career continued to prosper.  He even earned a gold medal at the 2008 Olympics while playing for the USA national team.  It was not until a few days ago that Bryant was back in the spot light for poor conduct.  When a referee made a call against the player.  In the third quarter of the game, Bryant received a technical foul.  Bryant proceeded to curse at the referee, calling him a gay slur.  On television, a viewer can clearly see the player mouthing the words.  One of the announcers even comments that Bryant should be taken off the cameras, since children are watching at home.  Bryant has since issued an apologetic statement, as well as being fined $100,000.
 
There has been recent trend with celebrities spewing hurtful and controversial insults.  The Parisian fashion designer John Galliano was fired from his position at Dior after publicly calling a Jewish couple anti-Semitic slurs.  It has bee speculated that the Jewish couple was using gay slurs towards the designer as well, but this does not dismiss anyone’s behavior.  Bryant, and Galliano, has had to pay for their insensitive and ignorant behavior.  I hope that such celebrities try harder to monitor what they say because, whether or not they signed up for it, they are in the spotlight.  Children will always be watching and observing.  No one wants his or her child to aspire to become an anti-Semitic homophobe.