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Gayle King: Keep on Keeping on!

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Far be it from me to offer moral support to someone best known to the world as Oprah Winfrey's friend (and the editor of Winfrey's magazine, O). King knows where to get moral support -- and a new car, too -- if she wants it.

Still I have to cheer her on in the silly controversy over an interview she did with a WNBA star.

King was known to me, by the way, before she went national. She was a news anchor at WFSB in Hartford, CT for many years, during some of which I was living in nearby Enfield, and regularly watching that station's local news.

But, to the controversy: after the death of Kobe Bryant, and a lot of all-too-typical 'he was the greatest thing in the universe and we'll all miss him": coverage, King did an interview with a woman basketball player, Lisa Leslie, who was a friend of Kobe's.

King went where most of the postmortem coverage wouldn't, bringing up the fact that Bryant had settled sexual assault allegations against him in 2003. She didn't press or sensationalize here. She simply observed that these charges were a part of Bryant's life, and let Leslie take it from there. Leslie replied (as one might expect) that they didn't describe the man she knew. 


So far, you might ask: where's the controversy? Well, then one hasn't had one's head in the world of social media lately. The pushback has been intense. The rapper Snoop Dog posted a video on social media of him literally threatening King. The video has him saying, "respect the family and back off -- before we come to get you."


Wow.  


Well, King, one of your old north central Connecticut viewers thinks you should just keep on keeping on. 



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