Rutten is particularly good at picking out the fruits of the editorial "hysteria" driving much of the coverage -- e.g. his dry reference to "probing lifestyle features...about Eagle County, Colo." And surely he's right to knock the NYT for the purple prose of their profile of the DA there.

But I'm glad to see that he refuses to endorse the disturbing kind of stunt pulled by Tom Leykis and Luke Ford. Rutten's right, let the courts make the necessary decisions about the accuser's privacy, not tendentious media types pandering to the crowd.

It is lack of media restraint that has generated much of the unfairness to both Bryant and his accuser.

I hesitate to log in on this, but I am not unsympathetic to Luke Ford's views posted elsewhere on this site. Ford is more militant on this issue than I am (hey, he's younger!) but he sure has a point about things being tilted unfairly against Kobe... but then maybe I just can't shake a fan's awe.

How can you tell what his views are? He's told so many different stories now to justify his actions that I'm dizzy. The rants he makes up against L.A. Observed are just bizarre and make him sound like a nut case.

I'm tired of this "innocent until proven guilty" mantra repeated by Rutten and the respectable media. This only applies legally.

Kobe may well be innocent yet found legally guilty or vice versa. A court ruling is not equivalent to truth.

Juries are not necessarily better forums for establishing truth than Joe Blow in his living room. To begin with, most jury members are morons drawn from the dregs of society. Witness the OJ Simpson criminal trial, where a double murderer was found not guilty because he was black.

I've served on juries where the blacks will not convict a black no matter what the evidence. This is common.

People reading about the Kobe case have a moral right to opine on this case to their heart's content, as do talkshow hosts.

According to the evidence revealed in the media so far, in my opinion, anyone who definitively states Kobe is guilty or innocent is a moron.

Gee, Luke, talk about lack of restraint: "Most jury members are morons drawn from the dregs of society." Really? I've been summoned to serve next month, so I'll remember your statement. Maybe I'll wear a badge with the word "Dreg."

Let me add that I'm an old man and I've been on a lot of juries. My perception of what is "common" differs considerably from your perception. I've served on juries in a number of cases here in L.A. where the defendant was black, but there were no racial divisions when it came time to vote.

Luke: As one who has had the pleasure of being falsely accused of a crime (framed, frankly) and then having his name spread across the pages of a local newspaper, I assure you, a finding of "only legal" innocence is one hell of a nice relief. And, to have people I know tell me they do not believe I was innocent, in large part because they read it in the paper, is most devestating. All I was accused of was simple petty theft. I was placed under citizens arrest by someone with an obvious axe to grind and received a finding of factual innocence from the District Attorney. Yet, there are those who believe I did it. My burden, a decade later, while minescule, is a irksome point on a micro scale.

If Mr. Bryant is innocent (and I have no way of knowing either way - I will look to that silly legal system thing to guide me in my moral judgement of him) his reputation will be permanently sullied. And you will have helped set the stain.

Bob, precisely how have I helped set the stain of Kobe's reputation? I have never argued for either his guilt or innocence and I have said that to proclaim either now is stupid and wrong.

In regards to black jurors, because the African-American community is dominated by a liberal philosophy (based on voting records and party registration), it's more likely that a black person will have misplaced sympathies for people undeserving of the benefit of the doubt, or a distorted sense of who's truly guilty, who's not. It's sort of the reverse side of those racists who, all too frequently decades ago, absolved whites of murders of blacks.

However, what makes the simpleminded liberalism pervasive in too many black neighbhorhoods so much more self-destructive is that crime rates often are much higher there than elsewhere, including many of those places where horrible white bigots resided a long time ago (and I don't think the leftism of America's black community is necessarily any more connected to this country's history of racism and slavery, anymore than leftism in chaotic Third World countries is somehow due to the history of racism---or slavery---in those nations).