The Shiv in the Hand of Kindness

After the death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, a story of compassion in the age of Twitter mobs

A Studio City mural depicting Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, by L.A. artist Art Gozukuchikyan (Artoon)

Let’s talk about piggybacking onto trauma, about inserting yourself into the story, about fanning the debate, about petitioning for solace, about recognizing the inescapable pain of others and taking a little portion for yourself. If cultural appropriation is seen as grotesque and harmful and a sign of privilege, appropriating pain has become all the rage, something that elicits for the practitioner solicitations of “I’m so sorry this happened to you…” and rejoinders about personal bravery. If, by chance (but what are the chances?), there is no ready pain available, you can recycle something from the past, massage what’s at hand, blow new life into it, in other words, pain is pain is pain, and anyone doubting this does so at their own risk. But why doubt, when this empathy substitute, this Sweet‘N Low of caring, tastes so delightful? As does its corollary/can’t-have-one-without-the-other, an appetite for the public destruction of others.

At about 9:45 a.m. on January 26th, a helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven other people crashed into a hillside in Calabasas. All onboard were killed. Three hours later, Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez tweeted a link to…