Kobe, King, Cosby: If You Live Long Enough, You Too Will Have a Complicated Legacy
Kobe Bryant wasn’t perfect, but neither are you.
There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.
— James Truslow Adams
My mother attended a funeral recently for a long-standing member of the church in which I grew up. I remember the person fondly. He was a faithful deacon — the first to arrive to open the church and the last to close it. He always sat in the back pews ever-ready to help the audio-visual team and the church service run smoothly. He was just always ready to help. We loved him. He was a quiet man, and he and I exchanged few words, but in the rare cases we did, it was a mouthful: “Sister Samuels, I don’t sin,” he told me categorically one evening after a service. I remember staring at him silently in bewilderment. All have sinned and fallen short according to the Bible, so there’s that. But at the moment I really didn’t have much to counteract his declaration. I still don’t.
If it was your expectation that I would, at this point, reveal some kind of earth-shattering bombshell (tales of sex and deceit, theft and salaciousness), I’m sorry to disappoint you. I will say though that something his…
