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I really do try not to encounter Bill O'Reilly on a regular basis. I watched about 20 minutes of his show a week ago (please, don't ask why) and felt as if I had lost a couple of brain cells. But when the ladies of Jezebel posted this I was curious. I'm not even angered by what he says in this piece. I'm just insulted at the very choice of topic.
Basically, the clip speaks for itself. Three white people are sitting around and trying to analyze why black folks like Michael Jackson. Because apparently he wasn't black anymore because he chose to have white children. So I guess that Angelina Jolie and Madonna are officially not white anymore. And how about Meg Ryan? Did she reject whiteness because she adopted an Asian little girl? But I digress...
My biggest problem here is the very question: "Why do black people like Michael Jackson?" And I'll answer that question with another question: Why do we have to justify it to you or anyone else? Imagine if the folks at BET sat around and asked (without any white people in the room): Why do white people love [insert any famous person with a drug habit, criminal record or seedy past here]? The question would be absurd! Because no one would ever ask with the words "white people," they would simply ask: why do people love..." But because we're black our tastes, culture and allegiances have to be analyzed and processed for the masses.
I've written about the Rihanna-Chris Brown incident before. And I'm not trying to water-down its sigificance by calling it an incident. But I don't care for convicting people, even in the court of public opinion, until they've been proven guilty. Like many people I'll be watching to see what the end result of the proceedings about this event will be.
A friend of mine brought this informal survey of Boston teenagers to my attention. The results are nothing less than terribly disturbing. Nearly half of teens between the ages of 12 and 19 believed that Rihanna was to blame for being beaten by her boyfriend. Let's ponder that for a moment. Nearly half.
I would be lying if I said I'm surprised. I'm not. And perhaps that is cynical, but just the conversations I've had with my own friends, who are adults, have disturbed me. Many of us seem to be making excuses for why Chris Brown would do something like this. I've heard excuses ranging from: "he's young," to "we all make mistakes."
Enough has been said about what Rihanna can do to be a good role model to young girls. I'm less concerned about that at the moment. I'm most concerned with what we adults can do to ensure the teens and children in our lives don't hold the opinion that there is something a woman can do that would make her responsible for the violence of another person.
We all have a responsibility to explain to them violence is never acceptable. We also have a responsibility to remind them if Rihanna decides to forgive Chris Brown that is her decision and it doesn't make her pathetic or stupid. Yes, Rihanna is a singer and a byproduct of that has made her a role model. But she isn't an expert and she doesn't always make the right choices.
Violence is never acceptable and we should all acknowledge this. It doesn't matter if it exists between boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, father/mother and child. It is always wrong.
If anything can come out of this terrible event, I hope the public can engage in a real conversation about domestic violence. It's a topic that's worth more than a few Lifetime movies and Law and Order episodes.
The American public has this really annoying way of demonstrating our "isms" after a major news event. We got a good taste of this last year when Hillary Clinton ran for president, last week when the NY Post published a cartoon depicting our president as a chimp and for the last several weeks since this Rihanna and Chris Brown drama went down. The Daily News published this article today and I've had enough.
OK. So we don't know all the details of went on between Chris Brown and Rihanna. All we know is he was arrested and she was treated in the hospital. Until we know more, we should really stop from speculating. But while we are speculating there's only so much that should be said. The Daily News article, which is mostly about Chris Brown going to anger management, has some really disgusting quotes from anonymous sources, including:
"It didn't help that Rihanna grabbed the keys out of his rented Lamborghini and threw them down the street. She knew it would really infuriate Chris, and it worked."
Really, so now throwing keys justifies violence? I get it. Chris Brown is young. He's talented. And I don't know that he's guilty. But rather than saying, "he didn't do it." The rhetoric seems to be, "he did it but it wasn't his fault." So whose fault is it then? Rihanna's? The mighty media?
I intentionally did not look at the pictures of Rihanna's injuries that TMZ posted because I thought it was terrible that they were even available. So I don't know how extensive her injuries were. But if he is indeed responsible for them he should be punished. If he is not, then whoever resorted to that kind of violence should be punished. But enough with the "it's OK to hit a woman when..." talk.
