The ruckus over a Gayle King interview clip has morphed into a vicious social-media battle including harsh words from Snoop Dogg and Susan Rice, NBC News reports. The spark was a clip of King interviewing WNBA legend Lisa Leslie, and asking her about the 2003 rape allegation against Kobe Bryant. With King now said to be facing death threats, Dogg piled on: "What do you gain from that? I swear to god, we the worst," the rapper said an expletive-filled video. "Why y'all attacking us? We your people!" After accusing her of failing to "come after" Harvey Weinstein, Dogg insulted her and told her to "back off ... before we come get you." Among the reactions:
- "Gayle King is one of the most principled, fair and tough journalists alive," tweeted former national security adviser Susan Rice. "...You come for @GayleKing, you come against an army. You will lose, and it won't be pretty."
- "All these years why didn’t you ask or interview Kobe when he was living!!" said comedian Rickey Smiley, host of the Rickey Smiley Morning Show, per the Washington Post.
- "Protect @LisaLeslie at all cost! You're a real Superhero!! Sorry you had to through that ... We are our own worse enemies!" tweeted LeBron James.
- Singer-songwriter Ari Lennox called King "self-hating" and a "coon" who was "tearing down the legacies of so many phenomenal, beautiful black men," per the New York Daily News.
- "It's so sad and disappointing that successful Black Women are being used to tarnish the image and legacy of successful Black Men even in death," tweeted Bill Cosby from prison.
- "You always have this unease in the black community when it comes to this view of black men being taken down with rape accusations," black journalist Roland Martin tells the Post. "Within the black community, we also have to deal with the reality and have serious discussions about sexual assault."
- "Though Kobe Bryant’s death may have elevated him to a god in the minds of some people, his legend already growing to mythic proportions, this is not about him," writes Allison McGevna at Essence. "It is about violence—emotional, verbal, and physical—against Black women being the default of so many Black people in this country."
- King, who described herself as "mortified" and "embarrassed" by the clip—which took one moment out of a "very wide-ranging interview"—is reportedly discussing the clip's release with top CBS executives.
(See what King's BFF, Oprah Winfrey,
had to say.)
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