On Domestic Violence

Celebrities. They're just like us, Star magazine often proclaims. It turns out that in some cases, Star is right. Domestic violence can happen to any woman, in this case, a rich woman, a talented woman, a young and beautiful woman. As I'm sure you've gathered, I'm referring to the incident surrounding the Grammy Awards last night. As TMZ has reported, Rihanna and Chris Brown left Clive Davis's pre-Grammy party on Saturday night (technically sunday morning, at 12:30 am), and everything was seemingly fine. Then, on sunday night, Grammy producers received a call that neither Rihanna nor Chris Brown would be performing or appearing at the Grammy's. Rihanna's performance was replaced by the incomparable Al Green and Justin Timberlake singing "Let's Stay Together". A lot of blogs have called this ironic- I suppose they're thinking that Rihanna might "stay together" with Chris Brown, and forgive in the way that many women do in abusive relationships. I hope that no irony will come from that performance, and that she will dump his ass. Frankly, I don't care if he goes to jail. I hope he's sentenced to infinite community service, therapy, and forced to learn about domestic violence. And I hope, and believe he will, be shunned from the artistic community. There is no better punishment.
To a certain extent, I'm glad that when celebrities are the victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, this gets splashed all over the news. I realize that ethically, this is a difficult position to hold, and I imagine that many of you might disagree with my position. Rihanna has the world at her feet, she is beautiful, talented, immensely successful, wealthy and young. Maybe this is Chris Brown's first time assaulting her, maybe not. Either way she sounds like a very insecure young woman, the reported reason for the fight between Rihanna and Chris Brown was about her jealousy, her jealousy over him checking out other women at Davis's party. I hope that women everywhere can now better understand that it doesn't matter how beautiful you are, how smart you are, how sexy you are...if you were the most perfect woman in the world, he would still hit you. Because it's not about you, or what you did wrong, it's about him. It's about him wanting to hit you. As far as I can tell, this girl has nothing to be insecure about, but she is. Rihanna is one of the brightest stars, but if she doesn't realize how luminescent she is, she will stay with him. And her star will dim, until it is no more.