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Reality isn't what you see on television

By SUE CARLTON, Times Staff Writer
Published November 9, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Related coverage Special report: Fame, fast cars and fate Outlook for Bollea unclear [Jim Damaske | Times] Nick Bollea, 17, is the son of wrestler Hulk Hogan.

What a goofy celebrity family they seemed, slap-happily going about their improbable lives on "reality" TV.

There on VH1's Hogan Knows Best is the wrestler dad, a guy so famous your average toddler could name him on sight. There's the bleached-blond mom, the pretty career-minded daughter, the impish teenage son.

And, of course, there was all that fame and money, the sprawling houses and boats and fast cars.

Now we have some real reality.

Hulk Hogan's son charged in crash, the front page headline said, and on TV there was 17-year-old Nick Bollea in handcuffs, facing felony reckless driving and other charges in a crash that left his friend brain-damaged and comatose.

Now reality is a criminal court battle over whether Bollea will be found guilty and whether he will go to jail. It also may mean a civil court case over the large amount of money that will be needed to care for 22-year-old John Graziano, maybe for the rest of his life.

And a reality check here. In the wake of the arrest, did Bollea's attorneys really try to point some of the blame at Graziano? Graziano, who was a passenger and not the guy who climbed behind the wheel and raced with another car on a public street and crashed with some amount of alcohol in his system, according to police?

Did the lawyers really say, "The tragedy to both families is compounded by the fact that unfortunately, John was not wearing a seat belt. Thankfully, Nick was wearing his"?

I guess when it comes down to it, as lawyers will tell you, a courtroom is not a sandbox but a battleground, and one that can get bloody.

No matter the verdict, what happened on that Clearwater street in August is forever. A young man, a Marine who served in Iraq, was badly damaged. You have to hope there is some guilt, some remorse, some of those emotions lawyers tend to warn clients not to express while a case is pending, lest it be used against them. A battleground, not a sandbox.

If Bollea gets no jail time, people will always wonder if he got the celebrity discount. They will wonder, too, about his famous father, who was out with Bollea and his pals on a boat earlier on the day of the crash. They will wonder about the alcohol consumed by a 17-year-old - not at the level where the law presumes a driver to be impaired, but alcohol drunk by a minor just the same. Questions will linger about wealth and celebrity, overindulged rich kids and parental responsibility.

Money does have its privileges. It lets you at least flirt with hiring the bulldog lawyer who managed to keep the infamous Jennifer Porter out of jail. But celebrity can backfire, too, putting you under a microscope, bringing inevitable comparisons to the Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans of the world and fueling the public's perception of spoiled kids who get away with what their own never would.

Reality can be a lesson, too.

Maybe we should have printed this week's stories about what happened to Nick Bollea and what's to come with dotted lines around all the paragraphs and pictures. This would make it easier to cut the stories out and post them on any refrigerator that any teenager might be inclined to stick his head into.

We could even scrawl our own headline on top. See?, we could write, Reality can happen to anyone.

[Last modified November 9, 2007, 00:02:02]