Full Disclosure: I have experience with domestic abuse. I personally hate the terms “victim” and “survivor” so, let’s just say I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of habitual beatings. I’m not defending the actions of Chris Brown. I am saying, in comparison with other convicted famous domestic abusers, he has been grossly mistreated by American media.
I’m calling bullshit on the media’s continued social lynching of Chris Brown as The Worst Man Alive (Yeah, I used the “L” word).
Chris Brown is not a good guy. But by my standards he’s a pretty average variety of bad guy with worse judgment. A variety of bad guy so average that if he were white, his new album might be in the iTunes top ten by now and yesterday’s GMA performance might have been outside and accompanied by a throng of screaming fans and no questions about his battery of his ex-girlfriend.
There is something rotten in media land (what’s new?).
The inequity in media coverage of Chris Brown versus oh, say that colossal grade A asshole Charlie Sheen, (who has shot one woman, allegedly beat a UCLA student for refusing to have sex with him, beat and threatened to kill a porn actress he was dating, threw furniture at and threatened to kill ex-wife Denise Richards, threatened to kill ex-wife Brooke Mueller twice and terrorized another porn actress in the famous Plaza Hotel incident) is stark and startling and it has dramatically colored the public’s opinion of the two characters.
A number of great blogs have covered the contrast in coverage between these two total bastards, calling out TMZ in particular for their imbalanced coverage, but recent events demand a revisit.
Chris Brown went on GMA to shill his latest album. He performed and then sat down for what any other artist, not matter the level of scandal they were currently embroiled in, should have been a perfunctory and largely b.s. interview. GMA claims that they cleared all the Rihanna-centered questioning was approved by Brown and his people. Honestly? That seems like a pretty tall glass of bullshit. “Bad Boy” hasn’t been profitable for Brown and any PR flack worth his cell phone minutes would never have ok’d that line of questioning.
Was his temper tantrum and window breaking unacceptable? Absolutely, but part of me wonders how patient and mature I would be if I was still being publicly flogged for some of my more considerable fuck-ups?
ESPECIALLY when a dude, who has by all accounts done a lot worse was about to embark on a sold out one-man show.
Which brings us to that sad piece of shit a lot of people apparently are willing to pay a minimum of $79 to see (some reports have tickets in the sold out Chicago shows going for as much as $514) to see spew insanity, Charlie Sheen.
Coverage of Charlie Sheen has focused on his substance abuse (Oh poor him! Won’t somebody SAVE him!) and his nonsensical verbal diarrhea (That lovable scamp!). He has never had his feet held to the fire of a public flogging, largely because he’s been so successful at painting all the women who accuse him of misdeeds as gold diggers. Either despite the statistics that state one in four women have been a victim of domestic abuse the American public is more willing to believe that six women in a row are all gold diggers, rather than victims of a habitual abuser OR the media has done a good job of helping Sheen sweep his litany of misdeeds under the rug by focusing on his ” male need to kill and to win.”
Every interview Sheen does is a softball. Can you imagine if Brown had shot a woman? He’d be living under an overpass. Yet Sheen has shot a woman, beat up others and threatened to kill a few and has a million Twitter followers and tens of millions in the bank.
Anybody have any theories about the disproportionate and unequal media response that don’t begin and end with “because Chris Brown is a black man?” Honestly, if you do I am dying to hear them.
Racialicious
Bitch Magazine
