It's tough being Kobe Bryant. After dismantling the Los Angeles Lakers in order to prove you're Michael Jordan and committing adultery in order to raise your street credibility, you still don't get the proper respect. And when you don't get the proper respect, you cry. You cry because Karl Malone supposedly made a pass at your wife. Yes, that's the same wife you cheated on. Kobe Bryant ripping Karl Malone for hitting on his wife is somewhat like Saddam Hussein ripping the U.S. military for failing to adequately protect innocent Iraqis.

 "He was like a mentor, like a brother to me, so when something like that happens, you're upset, you're hurt," Bryant told the media on Dec. 12. Malone's agent responded: "Karl's response to Kobe's comments today is that he's a basketball player and not a soap opera actor and he doesn't intend to be involved in a personal soap opera."

 I'm a Celtics fan, so any juicy incident regarding the Lakers is quite hilarious to me. But the irony of Kobe Bryant playing the jealous lover after throwing over his wife, Vanessa, for some Colorado floozy hotel girl provides hilarity all its own. Sports columnist Peter Vecsey sums up the situation beautifully: "Now everyone knows Malone stands accused by Vanessa of hitting on her at halftime of the Nov. 23 Bucks-Lakers game. ... And so outraged that Vanessa's gallant defender, nothing, if not a one-woman man, threatened to take out Malone in three separate phone conversations, according to sources."

 If feminists weren't psychotic, they'd find this new Kobe situation troubling. How can a man who has cheated on his wife really take the moral high ground in a situation like this? Even if he didn't rape his Colorado hotel floozy, Bryant committed adultery. He deceived his wife and humiliated her before millions. And now Bryant is using her as a pawn to gain sympathy in a personal squabble with Karl Malone. How can any protector of the female gender not take offense?

 The truth is, the feminists don't really care what Kobe Bryant does, as long as he doesn't rape anybody. They don't care because they don't ask men to be gentlemen. That's not their agenda. Men can cheat as much as they like; after all, marriage means nothing. It's just a "patriarchal institution," as ardent feminist and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it in an appearance at Harvard Law School last month. Men can act like pigs, as long as they don't violently assault anyone. And conversely, women deceived by their husbands aren't victims, as long as they aren't raped or harassed.

 The feminists supposedly stand for equality between the sexes. But instead of holding men to a higher standard of morality, feminists claim that women can act like pigs, just as men do. For decades, feminists have promoted female sexual empowerment and promiscuity instead of male restraint.

 Radical feminists in the 1960s and 1970s preferred to degrade women rather than upgrade men. To that end, they ignored the vehicle of marriage, which is specifically designed to force men into a higher morality. Marriage instead was derided as "the chief vehicle for the perpetuation of the oppression of women," in the words of Marlene Dixon of the University of Chicago. Women who got married could not expect support from the feminists if their husbands acted immorally.

 By now, feminists have imprinted their image of marriage on the American mind. Marriage now means little beyond a prolonged living arrangement. Married women and single women are now full equals in moral terms. If a single woman cannot hold her boyfriend to monogamy, a married woman cannot, either. If the single woman can only complain about rape or harassment, the married woman can't complain about adultery.

 So when Kobe Bryant's wife is cheated upon, and then again when she is allegedly harassed and her cheating husband decides to protect the little woman, the feminists have no sympathy, since matrimony means nothing to them. But when Kobe's Colorado vamp rape accuser complains that she didn't consent to Kobe's advances, the feminists rush forward to protect her.

 Kobe Bryant should be the poster boy for the women's movement. He's the kind of guy they promote. He isn't bound by the conventions of that "sham" institution called marriage, and he only has consensual sex. Too bad he isn't a real man -- real men don't treat women like garbage.