As I’m sure everyone is aware by now, Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte got in huge trouble down in Rio during the summer Olympics. Recently, it was announced that he’d been suspended for 10 months by U.S. Swimming and that he’s not allowed to compete in world competitions.
But the entertainment world isn’t treating him as harshly. Instead, shortly after a Brazilian judge ordered Lochte to stay in the country, the Esquire network decided they were going to air a weekend marathon of Lochte’s 2013 reality show “What Would Ryan Lochte Do?” as a way to capitalize on the drama surrounding LochteGate.
And now, ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” is also trying to capitalize on the controversy surrounding Lochte as he’s competing in the upcoming season of the show.
It’s almost as if he’s being rewarded for his bad behavior.
Which brings me to my point: stop treating athletes who royally mess up like men-children.
If I was the one who had vandalized a bathroom in another country and covered it up by saying I was robbed at gunpoint, I can almost guarantee that I wouldn’t have been able to escape the country in the early morning and have been able to fly back home. I would have been locked up and the key probably would have been thrown away.
And if I did somehow manage to get out of the country, I would have been in so much trouble with my family.
Honestly, who knows what would have been worse?
It’s not just Lochte who acts like a man-children or who has potentially gotten away with less than legal actions. This past basketball season, Los Angeles Lakers player Kobe Bryant retired after playing in the NBA for 20 years. Everyone celebrated his illustrious career, which Bryant deserved.
But, out of all the celebrations and memorializing Bryant as the great basketball player his career highlights show that he is, there’s one stain on his record that no one talks about: his sexual assault allegation from 2003.
In fact, a week after Bryant’s final game, Gavin Polone, a Hollywood producer who’s known for his work on “Gilmore Girls,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and the 2002 Jodie Foster movie “Panic Room,” penned a column in The Hollywood Reporter titled “Remember When Kobe Bryant Was Charged With Rape? I Didn’t Forget, and Neither Should You.” In his column, Polone said that he asked his friends if they were uncomfortable with Bryant being celebrated despite the charges being dropped in criminal court and a settlement being reached in civil court.
The response Polone got from his friends? “That was a long time ago.”
Seriously?
Of course, Bryant isn’t the only well-known player who has been accused of sexual assault and denied the claims. Bryant and Lochte aren’t the only sports stars who do something wrong and have public reactions do what they do to protect their reputations.
But it’s the way they’re treated after the fact that’s almost unacceptable. Stop immediately defending athletes when they do something wrong. Stop inflating their egos any more than they’re already inflated. Stop treating them like they’re special little angels and try treating them like what they are: criminals.
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