January 23rd, 2010 // comments (1)

The Difference Between David Beckham & Andy Dick

This is the tale of two stories. Both involve crotch grabs, but only one involves criminal charges.

Andy Dick was arrested for ‘sexual abuse’ in the first degree and tossed into a West Virginia jail. He now faces 1-5 years in prison if convicted. A look a the criminal complaint (PDF) provides some details about the incident in question.

According to the criminal complaint, Dick was talking to a guy when he “unexpectedly and without invitation grabbed the victim’s crotch, repeatedly groping then kissing him.”

Also in the complaint, a security guard at the bar says that Andy Dick “grabbed his crotch and began laughing” when the guard tried to give him an armband.

This is nothing new for Andy Dick; he was arrested after a strikingly similar incident in 2008. for which he is currently on probation. As crass as this may sound, it’s kind of Dick’s shtick to pull stunts like this. And while I won’t argue that he did nothing wrong or vouch for his innocence in this case, I do wonder why a very similar incident this week was treated so differently both by the public and the local authorities.

Soccer star and tabloid magnet David Beckham was involved in a similar incident on Wednesday. Beckham was chatting with gathered press outside a restaurant in Milan, Italy when an Italian reporter pulled an Andy Dick.

She then worked her way past the camera crew and managed to touch Beckham’s testicles who jumped back with a start and looked at her stony faced before he security guards stepped in and dragged her away.

As she was led away Di Cioccio called out: “I touched it but it’s small. David you have conned us all. What did you use cotton wool? It’s all a trick.”

Of course the two celebrities were on opposite sides of the offense here; Andy Dick was the alleged aggressor and Beckham was the unwilling victim. But it’s a bit strange to me that we are able to laugh off the Beckham crotch grab (which was caught on video) and the Italian presenter will face no charges or public backlash, while Andy Dick is sent up the river for a possible 5 year sentence. It would seem to me that an unwanted crotch grab is an unwanted crotch grab, regardless of the sex of the perpetrator. So why the double standard here?

Update: Perhaps a better headline would have been ‘The Difference Between Elena Di Cioccio & Andy Dick’ but I’m not sure anyone outside of Milan knows that first name. I’ll stick with the current headline for now

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