American pop couple Chris Brown, 19, and Rhianna, 20. are in the news today after police responded to a 911 call about a disturbance. The LAPD took statements
from a female (Rhianna) with visible injuries, who named Brown as her attacker. He was later charged with ‘felony assault with a deadly weapon’ and released on $50K bail.
Gossip site TMZ are reporting that a fist or a foot or teeth can count as a deadly weapon and it doesn’t necessarily mean he beat her up with a knife or a gun. Oh what a relief. That’s not so serious then…
Like hell it’s not.
I have been gob-smacked this morning and last night to hear and read radio hosts and comedians and bloggers cracking jokes about him hitting her with an umbrella-ella-ella and treating it with the same seriousness as Paris Hilton’s latest boyfriend. One breakfast team spoke about how they’d heard Rhainna treated Chris Brown pretty badly and so ‘he must have just finally cracked’. They also wondered what she might have done to ‘bring this on’.
Ugh. When did beating up a woman become something to gossip about? And when did we return to such archaic notions of women provoking a man to abuse her?
It seems men who hit women have moved from the news pages to the entertainment pages of newspapers.
In the breathless saturation coverage and publicity around the new series of Underbelly, I’ve been amazed at how quickly the media has forgotten that Mathew Newton was charged with assaulting – repeatedly – his former girlfriend Brooke Satchwell. Never mentioned in any of the interviews I’ve read with the actor.
And several weeks ago, my blood boiled to read excerpts of an interview with fashion designer Wayne Cooper where he dismissed his conviction for assaulting HIS former partner, Sarah Marsh as ‘being blown out of proportion….all I did was touch her on the shoulder’.
Oh really? The police don’t tend to charge, prosecute and convict people for shoulder touching. They convict them for hitting someone, in this case, his partner and the mother of his children. While his children were present.
I feel sick at the thought that rappers and designers and actors are giving domestic abuse a veneer of cool, of acceptable, of being ‘no big deal’, something you can just say a quick sorry for, something that will make you more famous than you were before and will not impact on your career or life in any way.
Meanwhile, Rhianna is reported to have bite marks and bruises on her body. They are reporting:
“huge contusions” which swelled up on both sides of her forehead. We’re
told she also suffered “a bloody lip and nose.”
How will Chris Brown’s record company – who have a huge investment in his image – spin this one I wonder? He probably just touched her on the face…….with his fist.
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whoa just noticed this post is from almost exactly three years ago...
Thanks Judy! I cringed when I reread the comment after posting, it does sound a bit sanctimonius FIG JAM* :) so I appreciate you understanding the waffle!
(*If you don't know what this means...just ask me)