That's right. This obese body guard wearing sweat pants is her firm's idea of a professional. But to be fair, he opens doors:
Two months ago, the man in the yellow was innocuously talking on the phone at the Bush International Airport in Houston trying to locate his ride. Unfortunately, he happened to stand too close to Patti LaBelle's luggage. According to reports, she rolled down the window and directed her bodyguards to take care of the guy.Watch this:
They did. Richard King, age 23 and a West Point Cadet ended up bloodied, with a concussion and in the hospital. Immediately, while King was on the ground, staggering around and a lone valiant hero in a white cowboy hat was trying to help him, the Houston Police were asking for autographs while LaBelle appeased them with photo ops.
King has filed charges against LaBelle. Her son, tried to claim this:
Well, I'm going to point out that nowhere in the tape does it show King harassing the limo. And if the allegations of her son were true, don't you think he'd have the integrity to stick by them?"The limousine driver, Zuri Edwards, 37—LaBelle's son-- made a complaint against King but declined to press charges, according to Jody Silva, a spokeswoman for the Houston police department.
The police incident report, based on Edwards' complaint, says that King was belligerent and was harassing the occupants of the limo."
King's lawyer admits the Cadet had two drinks --but not enough to be obnoxiously or recklessly intoxicated. Besides, he was meeting his parents. LaBelle's son is asking us to believe that the cadet would be so stupid as to show up sloshed to the point of embarrassment if his mother and father were picking him up. Sorry, I'm not in the mood to suspend reality.
I have no patience for overwrought egos such as LeBelle's, no sympathy for what security breaches she may have had in the past. If there has been problems she doesn't take them very seriously given the lack of professionalism exhibited by a body guards who can only be called wide-in-girth, and slim in security details. I've seen security details at LAX. There are walkie talkies, cars that appear, the notorious gets whisked away, the luggage follows in a separate car. I've attended events where high level security was in place --they do not look or behave like that. Whatever excuses the LaBelle camp can serve up --she hired thugs, they behaved like thugs. LaThugs are not professionals. LaBelle is responsible for this dysfunctional firm for which she's their living, breathing, over-indulgent paycheck.
While they didn't know King was a West Point Cadet, someone in their PR camp knew they could dish up enough crap and get him thrown out. Hence, King will now deploy as an enlisted soldier. He is welcome to "re-apply" after his deployment is ended, and finish out his final year. To that I say absolute Bullshit.
There are questions:
- Was her limo allowed to perch in a zone that is normally kept moving. If so, why?
- Why did the Houston PD pose for autographs?
- Was an investigation ever launched?
- Why is it that 2 months later, King's attorney has to ask that criminal charges be made against the body guards? Why weren't charges pressed earlier?
- Do the bodyguards in question have clean records?
- Doesn't the public need to be protected from thugs posing as bodyguards, and should such details be allowed at a public airport?
- What does West Point have to gain by kowtowing to LaBelle's PR team? (They should take care of their cadets. The public is taking care of LaBelle's actions quite well).
Maybe LaBelle should heed the words of Barry Manilow in an article that came out yesterday. He spoke about the revelation he had when fame enveloped him:
I didn't like how I was treating other people. I felt I was being demanding. I felt like I was not treating people kindly. But most of all I didn't like where I found myself. I remember this night in Florida about five years, four years into my beginning of this trip — I don't like the word "celebrity" — my fame trip. And I was outside in a rocking chair looking at the stars, and I realized that everybody in my house that I was renting on a beach in Florida I was paying. Everybody around me I was paying. My friends had seemed to have disappeared. And this craziness becomes a job, a job that I'm grateful for and that I like, but it's not my life. I had to rethink everything.
He was 29 when he discovered this. It seems LaBelle, at 67, is less mature than Manilow was when he was a young man.
What will happen next is sadly predictable. She'll talk her way onto daytime TV shows to try to appease an audience. She'll offer money to military related charities. She will claim to have always been a military supporter.
But frankly, I could care less about the Diva of Negligence and LaThugs. West Point Cadet or civilian, this never should have happened.
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6 comments:
and yet she will get away with it... too bad her good friend Oprah can't have her on her show to cry crocodile tears.
it is the old... if you tell a lie enough times sooner or later someone will believe it. Clinton knew this and it served him well. I have never been impressed by "stars" and their minions from hell.
I can't believe they are doing that to the Cadet King stripping away all he has worked for. She should be ashamed but she won't.
cheers, parsnip
From what we could tell, he didn't break any rules. West Point is being mum on all this, but from what it appears, he was attacked.
And I have to say, if someone got close to my face as they did, I'd shove them back too.
In colleges, the standard for administrative actions in re. to alleged crimes is very different from what you would expect in a criminal proceeding. Had the incident been forwarded to the DA, and the DA decided to charge the cadet for a crime, the legal burden of proof (in most criminal cases) would have been beyond reasonable doubt. You'd get the opportunity to select an "unbiased" jury, present your case, etc, under strict legal procedures.
However, a school can take action against a student if it finds that an allegation is simply credible enough. Therefore, if a school finds that the police report is more likely than not believable, then it can dismiss the student. In general the school must set up a process to allow the student opportunity to challenge the decision (often in front of a committee). However the standard schools often use is difficult to gauge, though it's often something akin to the civil burden, which is preponderance of the evidence (more 50% chance of being true). These committees are often ad-hoc, and you don't have the same right to representation, etc.
The problem here is the police report, which purports to put the full blame on the cadet. Of course, it seems that there are major problems with the (lack of) police investigation. We often take police reports to be completely factual, but their usefulness depends on the quality of the investigation. In this case the police only took statements from LaBelle's party. Other third-party witnesses who side with the cadet were dismissed and not questioned. I don't believe the cadet was even questioned. The resulting police report therefore was completely one sided and therefore unreliable.
West Point however, can rely on the police report to substantiate its dismissal of the cadet, even if the underlying police investigation now seems unreliable. Until the report is changed, I don't believe the school "has" to reverse its decision.
It's a very unfortunate situation; Richard King is stuck in a difficult position and he's pursuing his only legal recourse, which is to sue LaBelle.
PS: Kanani please don't link to PH, LOL. It's too gossipy.
Big fat egos. Big fat bodyguard thugs. They're all just big and fat. And ugly!
Anon --Hate to tell you this, but Facebook, and even the most serious of bloggers are fraught with gossip. Believe me, there is a military blogger akin to Perez Hilton, but the identity shifts around from person to person...or shall I say, persona to persona? Personally, I thought his photo was hilarious, and the ensuing conversation where he got slapped around was pretty good too.
Ferd, I agree. They're awful, and she's guilty of upholding and cultivating thug culture. The sad thing? With all her money, her kids could have been lawyers, doctors, teachers, scientists, journalists --the world was their oyster. Instead, they're limo drivers.
This is Anonymous again. My biggest concern is the dismissal from West Point, and I've just read that the school hasn't budged in its dismissal. That’s going to be the most difficult thing to contest, because as I said before, schools have a lot of leeway with dismissals, and when something like that happens, there are few options available.
Being a senior and missing out on graduating with your class is upsetting. Additionally, being injured in a way that may affect your ability to service rubs salt into the wound: King’s ability to contribute and the Army’s investment is diminished.
From my legal perspective, I think King's suit has merit. It will ultimately turn on how a jury interprets the facts, and based on the initial information, there’s a credible enough case (although the weakest claim is that LaBelle directed the entire thing). Nonetheless if a jury found that the bodyguards acted inappropriately, she could be liable as their boss through respondeat superior. The video you've linked to shows the incident much better than some of the 30 sec videos initially shown on other news channels. It continuously captures most of King’s whereabouts, and more clearly shows the unprovoked shoving that led up to the attack.
In any case, right now it seems that King will have to serve for 18 months before he can reapply to West Point and finish his education. However, the Houston police is stating that they are reopening this case. IF (hopefully) they change their initial biased report (based only on questioning the attackers), then perhaps King’s school will change its decision.
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