Exhibit A: From Jock Itch, printed in The Stranger, early February, 2004: "Even if he (Kobe Bryant) didn't force the concierge to submit to sex, only a spoiled narcissist infused with a pornographic sense of entitlement doesn't notice when a woman isn't fully consenting."
Your honor, on Wednesday of last week, Mr. Bryant's rape case was dismissed in Eagle, Colorado after his accuser decided not to cooperate with the prosecution. Bryant immediately issued an apologetic statement summarized here: "I want to apologize to her for my behavior that night. Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident in the same way I did. Now I understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter."
And now I'd like to badger the witness' confusing statement. I think what Kobe is trying to say is this: "The hotel concierge and I had consensual sex, but I didn't realize that she wasn't having the same kind of consensual sex that I was having. The consensual sex she was having didn't FEEL consensual to her. The consensual sex I was having was definitely consensual because I FELT it was consensual. Although she FEELS she did not consent to this encounter, I FEEL as though she did and so it was consensual."
Closing arguments: Members of the jury, I'd like to submit to you that you have been hoodwinked and hornswoggled. If we believe Kobe's insinuation that the teenager consented to being forced to have sex with him in his hotel room, then what behavior is he apologizing for? Not chivalrous behavior. Not decent behavior. Could it be violent behavior? Did this 19-year-old consent to having violent sex? Kobe is much more powerful than she is, so in that hotel room last summer he was the one dictating the definition of whatever the hell he did. But if Kobe ever found himself on the receiving end of his own form of consensual sex, he might also cry foul.
