All hail the accused rapist

Sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it? I mean, why would we ever shower praise upon someone accused of forcing a girl to have sex with him?

But that’s what millions across America, and even this world, have been doing the past few weeks as we follow every move of Los Angeles Lakers superstar guard Kobe Bryant.

Journalists all across America, particularly in the very forgiving confines of Southern California, have been doing a good job of spinning Bryant’s daily events into a hero’s quest for justice.

Fighting Colorado prosecutors by day, and San Antonio Spurs by night, as one journalist called it. It’s as if Kobe lost a loved one to a serial killer and is fighting for vengeance, all the while balancing a basketball career.

How further from the truth could it be?

Let’s review the lessons kids could take away from Kobe’s actions:

1. It’s all right to have sex with women you meet in a hotel and have talked to for about 45 seconds. I mean, as long as it’s consensual, right? That’s not illegal.

2.Fine, maybe it’s wrong to do that, you know, since I do have a wife and 1-year-old daughter. But all you have to do is buy your wife a $ 4-million ring and that will take care of her. And as for the public, I’m so good at basketball, that as long as I produce on the court, everyone will forgive me.

Now whether Kobe is really guilty or not, the fact of the matter is that Kobe is a bad role model, and an even more terrible person. He embodies all the wrong things about professional basketball today — men abusing their God-given talents and getting away with it just because they can.

We should respect and idolize someone just because he has to face rape charges in the morning, take a three-hour flight on a private jet from Colorado to California, and then get paid millions of dollars to play a game for three hours at night?

That sure makes a lot of sense — what a tough life the poor guy leads. How about the thousands of single-parent households where mothers or fathers have to juggle two or three jobs to put food on the table? So, just because they can’t consistently put a ball through a circle, they’re not heroes?

I don’t care how many points he scores, or if he leads the Lakers to another championship. Kobe handled the manner in a selfish and disrespectful manner, and the media is wrong to portray it in any other light.

If Kobe had any kind of class, he would stop playing basketball out of respect to the fans, his teammates and the public until this whole ordeal is settled.

Instead Kobe publicly buys his wife a ring, appears at the Teen Choice Awards a week after the story unfolded wearing a Muhammad Ali t-shirt, and plastered his body with tattoos. Smart move — I couldn’t think of a more classier way to handle rape allegations.

And Muhammad Ali? Please, Kobe. Muhammad Ali fought for social change — you just had sex with a 19-year-old.

But Kobe is smart — he knows that we’ll love him anyway.

With the rest of us extolling his every move, why wouldn’t he just keep on playing and basking in everyone’s praises?

So play on Kobe, the rest of America is watching to see if you can eventually defeat the demons of the Colorado Circuit Court while earning millions to play basketball.

In the post-game conference following Game 6 of the Western Conference Semifinals where the Lakers eliminated the Spurs, Bryant was happily playing with his daughter in his lap.

I’d sure like to hear how he’s going to explain this mess to her one day.

But he won’t have to — the media will do it for him.

Sam Hong is a Weinberg junior. He can be reached at [email protected]