Arnold, Kobe: separating the men from the image

Having spent much of the past 30 years writing about the media, I’ve developed a deep fascination with the differences between the image that public figures project through the media and the reality of what they are in private life -- off stage, off camera and out of print.

This fall, with Arnold the Terminator running for governor and Kobe the Adulterer running for his life, we have ample opportunity -- far more opportunity than many of us would like, alas -- to examine anew this phenomenon.

I’ve never been a fan of Schwarzenegger’s movies -- or anyone’s shoot-’em-up, blow-’em-away movies, for that matter -- but I spent some time with him several years ago in the course of writing a lengthy magazine profile and I came away impressed with his intelligence, sophistication, poise, politeness and, yes, gentleness.

As a journalist, I’ve been around enough public figures -- politicians, athletes, entertainers and the like -- to know that one should never confuse public image with private reality. But the private Arnold seemed so strikingly different from the brutal, unthinking, monosyllabic movie Arnold that even I was surprised.

He’s an actor, of course, and I’m sure he was on his best behavior. Then again, he’s not a very good actor, and even though people were already talking about him as a future political candidate -- this was in 1996 -- he made no discernible attempt to conceal his brazen, vulgar sexual chauvinism.

Readers who had seen Schwarzenegger’s lewd, boastful interview in Oui magazine in 1977 -- or who have seen reprints or online links to it in the recall campaign -- would not have been surprised by such behavior, but I hadn’t seen the interview, so I was surprised.

Around the time I first met Schwarzenegger, The Times published a Valentine’s Day story on various prominent couples, he and his wife, Maria Shriver, among them. The story said that on the day they met, Schwarzenegger told Shriver’s mother, “Your daughter has a great body” (an anecdote The Times repeated in a story early this month). I asked Schwarzenegger if he’d really said that.

“No,” he said, with a huge grin. “I said, ‘She has a nice ass.’ ”

A couple of weeks later, I flew to Las Vegas with Schwarzenegger for a promotional event at which he met Sandra Bullock for the first time. He greeted her in a way that makes Adrien Brody’s Oscar-night embrace of Halle Berry look like a stiff handshake. On the limo ride to the airport afterward, one of Schwarzenegger’s aides was laughing about the encounter.

“Only Arnold,” he said. “He never met her before, but did you see that kiss he gave her?”

Schwarzenegger beamed.

“You know what I always say,” he said. “He who hesitates ... masturbates.”

Kobe Bryant apparently adheres to the same philosophy -- or at least he did on the night of June 30, in his room at an Eagle County, Colo., resort.

Bryant is charged with raping a 19-year-old woman that night, and while he denies the charge, he does admit having sex with her.

Before his arrest and his admission of adultery, Bryant had such a squeaky-clean image that he was thought to lack sufficient “street cred” to sell as many tennis shoes to young NBA wannabes as a star of his magnitude and magnetism might expect.

Bryant always seemed, pre-Colorado, a decent, thoughtful young man. I’ve never met him, and I know no more about him than I’ve seen on the basketball court and read in the newspaper, so I have no idea whether his sexual encounter in Colorado -- consensual or forced -- was an isolated incident or part of a pattern of behavior.

I do know, however, that the sexual temptations for professional athletes in particular are enormous, and as that famous basketball player Oscar Wilde once said, “I can resist everything except temptation.”

Behind the scenes

At earlier points in my life, I spent a lot of time around athletes -- most notably Wilt Chamberlain and his Lakers teammates. When I wrote a book about him in 1972, I saw countless women literally throw themselves at the Lakers, and if any resisted -- including one of Wilt’s teammates, who was the team’s then-reigning, squeaky-clean star -- it wasn’t apparent to me.

I don’t offer this observation to cast any aspersions on Bryant -- only to make the point that it’s not easy to know the person beneath a familiar surface. Even though I’m a career journalist, I think the public should be wary of accepting at face value the image that the media present for any celebrity, whether it’s positive or negative.

Take Wilt, for example. He never married. He lived a sybaritic, self-indulgent lifestyle. (In a book he wrote after the one we worked on together, he boasted of having had sex with 20,000 women.) His teams often lost to Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics, even though Wilt compiled the greatest individual statistics in basketball history. All this combined to give him the public image of a selfish male chauvinist.

He certainly was a male chauvinist -- with the women he dated. But we were friends for almost 30 years, and he always behaved like a gentleman toward every woman I brought along when we had dinner together.

I can also tell you that Wilt was extraordinarily generous -- not selfish -- and that he quietly, often anonymously, made significant contributions to various charities for much of his life. He also devoted a great deal of time to helping disadvantaged youngsters participate in sports.

When he died, leaving an estate initially valued at more than $10 million, before taxes and expenses, he left most of it to charities involving children and the underprivileged.

I counted 37 such separate bequests, ranging from $5,000 to $1 million, the latter for Operation Smile.

‘Chamberlain Award’

Operation Smile, Wilt’s favorite charity, has provided reconstructive surgery and related health care to tens of thousands of indigent children and young adults in the United States and in 20 developing countries since its founding in 1982.

On Wednesday night, Operation Smile will pay tribute to Wilt as the centerpiece of its “West Coast gala” at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. He will be given, posthumously, the first “Chamberlain Award,” which will be presented annually to “an athlete who aspires to make a difference in the lives of children.”

For those whose impressions of Wilt have been formed exclusively by what they’ve seen and heard in the media, such an award in his name must seem as unlikely as -- well, as unlikely, as Kobe Bryant being tried for rape ... or Arnold Schwarzenegger running for governor.

But even in this age of cable news, 24/7 coverage and streaming video on the Internet, all the media ever really provide are a series of snapshots of public figures -- fleeting images, not definitive portraits or X-rays or polygraph examinations.

Television, in particular, is superficial by nature, virtually incapable of dealing with complexity and contradiction, and it’s through television that most Americans learn about public figures.

Fortunately, even in a time of growing media consolidation, there is still enough variety in our news sources that a diligent citizen can get different images from different venues and, with some effort, gather enough information to triangulate and approximate what a public figure might really be like.

It’s difficult work, especially in politics, entertainment and professional sports, where the images of public figures are so tightly controlled by highly skilled, highly paid spinmeisters. But it’s both possible and necessary.

If you do seek information from several sources -- and ignore rumor and gossip -- you should be able to decide what you think Schwarzenegger is really like, how much his sexist behavior reflects his true character, and whether you want him for your governor.

If you take the same approach and wait to get your information on Bryant’s behavior in Colorado from the trial itself, you should also be able to reach a reasonable conclusion about Bryant’s guilt or innocence.

The ugly innuendo that’s increasingly available online and on talk radio may be as difficult to ignore as the women who throw themselves at athletes and actors, but it’s seldom truly revealing. Like those athletes and actors, we succumb to it at our peril.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.