Permission to fake mourn
Now that a decent interval has passed since the death of American professional basketball player Kobe Bryant, dare I ask why the story received such saturation coverage in New Zealand? I had never heard of the American sporting wonder and was at a loss to understand why his death was given such prominence, featuring at the top of our news cycle for several days.
Bryant’s sporting achievements were trotted out endlessly, and by all accounts, the five NBA championship winner deserved his sporting chops.
Apparently Bryant, who won two Olympic gold medals during his 20-year career, was the most talented player to have ever laced up a basketball boot.
He might have been a sports-centric household name and an all-american hero, up there with the likes of Michael Jordan and Lebron James. He would’ve been well known to local basketball players and fans, but did his untimely demise warrant the excessive coverage it received Down Under?
Nine people, including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, died alongside him in the helicopter crash, and all of their deaths were tragic. But plenty of people die in plane and helicopter crashes.
A sidebar to Bryant’s death was the suspension ofa Washington Post reporter after she posted a link to a 2016 article about historical sexual allegations made against the basketball player.
Talkback radio shows spent endless hours deliberating over whether the posting of the article, so soon after the death, was disrespectful, or fair reportage of a sporting great.
Fuelled by the predatory beast that is social media and its insatiable search to latch upon the latest tragedy, the death of this basketball star quickly became the news story.
One has to feel sorry for the famous and their families. For them there is no privacy in death. Even if the family opts for a private funeral, social media has already taken guardianship and control over the deceased, and in the rudest of haste conducts a setpiece flash mob mourning over the celebrity’s death.
Even if mainstream media wants to exercise restraint over the death, it has to consult, and is obliged to reflect, the vulgar antics of social media. It’s a pile-on, and if you’re not all aboard and piling on with the appropriate post and swimming with the keyboard warrior sharks, then you’re at risk of becoming an outlier in the online community.
If you’re oblivious to, and untouched by, social media, and have been puzzled by the excessive coverage of Kobe Bryant in mainstream media, you will now be up to speed on him. Whether you like it or not. One can be forgiven for wondering how you had missed this greatest of stars in the sporting firmament.
Get up to speed, citizen, there’s a new kid in town and it’s Kobe Bryant.
For weeks the fixation and the story was Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein – full Stein ahead. Now there’s the death of sporting royalty, someone worthy and talented enough to occupy your thoughts.
In an empathy-deficit world, we have created a safe space to fake mourn the passing of people we have never met and previously didn’t know the first thing about. There we can conduct an outpouring of grief with both hands covering our faces as we peek out between two fingers to see if anyone’s noting our attempt at prescribed sadness.
In the news cycle, last week it was Kobe Bryant we mourned. Named Kobe after the famous Japanese beef, the vultures tore at his flesh and devoured his being, desperate in the hope of receiving the host of his greatness.