Reading and writing about Chris Brown, the undeniably talented singer who in 2009 become notorious for battering his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, has been, for the last four years, a depressing experience. Whether Brown’s been tossing chairs out of television studio windows, screaming at parking lot attendants, getting a tattoo of either a battered woman or a Dia De Los Muertos figure—who at the end of the day, is still a dead woman—on his neck, or reuniting with Rihanna, he’s been a figure of profound discomfort. Whether his behavior is the response to living through the domestic abuse his mother experienced when he was a teenager, a symptom of more wide-spread issues with anger and self-control, or a result of enormous entitlement, it’s awful to watch anyone behave so self-destructively, and do so much damage to other people in public. And whether Brown has been more of a target, or whether he’s been afforded more or fewer excuses for his behavior and chances to continue working than a white celebrity with a record of violence against women like Charlie Sheen, there’s no denying that his continued presence on Emmy stages and morning talk shows is a vertiginous exercise in trying to parse how much a liability the industry thinks domestic violence and a record of fights are, and how much the market believes that Brown is repentant or that his reunion with Rihanna has absolved him.

The latest intersection of Brown’s character rehabilitation and his need to keep selling records came yesterday morning when he appeared on the Today show to promote his latest single, “Fine China.” In response to questioning from Matt Lauer, about how he’s changed, Brown said that “Most importantly, you know, knowing that what I did was totally wrong, and having to kind of deal with myself and forgive myself in the same breath, and being able to apologize to Rihanna, and being able to be that man that can be a man, you know?” I don’t really know what that means, or what it means for an overall view of gender relations for someone to believe that battering an intimate partner is wrong, but that, as Brown recently said at a comedy club “You gotta say that one thing to her… don’t make me have to tell you again, that’s my p—y, baby! so you better not give it away!…So every person in this motherf–king building, if you got a bad b—h you better say that s–t to her, or she might f–k another n—a.”

But this juxtaposition, and the strange spectacle of people going on talk shows to tout their self-improvement in service of record sales, got me thinking about what it is that we want from celebrities who do terrible things but to continue to want our dollars as consumers. Do we want them to apologize to the people they’ve harmed directly, and to promise to do it never again? Brown seems to have that box checked with Rihanna, but the reaction to their reunion has illustrated how little most people know about how frequently survivors of domestic violence return to the people who abused them. And the fact that he’s reconciled with Rihanna doesn’t seem to have stopped Brown to getting into confrontations that sometimes turn violent with everyone from fellow singers like Frank Ocean to service workers like a parking attendant he unloaded on recently. That disjunct raises interesting questions about why we treat some forms of violence by wealthy and famous men as inexcusable and as a sign that they’re deeply troubled, while others get treated like they’re routine, even when they seem like contributing evidence that someone has a pattern of behavior that’s broadly troubling. Maybe it’s condescending, but I’d like to see Chris Brown stop getting into situations that get violent for his sake, for the sake of the people he gets angry at, and for what he could contribute to the larger conversation if he got religion on a deeper level than the need to retain the ability to sell records.
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If you want to know what it looks like when male artists show solidarity with women and women’s issues, the Dublin hip-hop group Original Rudeboys just provided a great example of it, turning down a chance to open for Chris Brown:

A member of the group Sean Walsh said: ‘Even though it’s a huge opportunity to play in the O2 with a major hip hop star and a substantial fee was offered, we are completely against Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna.’

The group also claimed they didn’t want to mislead their own fans as their latest single ‘Blue Eyes’ is about domestic violence.

Sean said: ‘In addition, with our latest single ‘Blue Eyes’ being about domestic violence it goes against everything we are about as a band and supporting Chris would send out the wrong message to our fans.’

It’s one thing to talk the talk, and another to take an actual financial and long-term growth hit in order to stay consistent with what you believe—or, like John Scalzi, to spend actual time and energy arguing the good fight instead of simply saying the right thing when you’re asked and it’s convenient to do so. I hope this comes back for them in all the best ways. And while it’s a little hard to track down good streaming audio of their stuff, I’d be up for hearing more of this:

On a related note, the argument’s been made, I think effectively, that some of the reaction to Chris Brown has been racialized, making a black man a scapegoat for domestic violence while famous white men with even worse records get to continue on their way. I do think that there’s an extent to which Brown appears to be trolling people who are dismayed by his behavior, since disapprobation seems to have hardened support among his core fans, as is the case with his decision to dress up as a jihadi stereotype for Halloween.

But I do think that there are racial differences between the response to Brown and the response to white men of a certain profitability behaving badly. And I can’t think of a better example of that than how quickly a silence descended around FX’s decision to work with Charlie Sheen, and to stay in business with him after the first ten episodes of Anger Management, and the fact that when the news came down yesterday that Fox had struck a deal to syndicate the sitcom on nine affiliate stations, that it went relatively uncommented upon. I’d like to think that the news that more Fox divisions are getting into business with a guy with a long record of violence against women is news. And if equality is what we’re after, I’d like to see the same kind of pressure on Sheen to behave constructively and respectfully towards women if he wants public approbation that’s being applied to Brown.

VH1 has yanked Ev and Ocho, a spinoff from its Basketball Wives franchise, that would have followed Dolphins wide receiver Chad Johnson and Evelyn Lozada in the early stages of their marriage, after Johnson was arrested over the weekend on battery charges. It’s one thing to pretend that people who don’t actually like each other are friends, or that people who are friends are fighting, or that celebrities are in danger of fake explosions. It’s to give a guy whose wife ended up at the hospital with a cut forehead while he got dragged off to jail a chance to sell himself to audiences as an appealing newlywed.

Entertainment companies have choices about what kind of people they want to be in business and what kinds of fantasies they want to sell. Johnson is hardly a money machine like Charlie Sheen, so the decision to drop him isn’t as painful to the network as it would be for the networks of the world to collectively and permanently turn their backs on that particular member of the Estevez clan. But still, it costs money to shoot a show and then shelve it. I’m glad that for now, VH1 isn’t interested in peddling that fantasy, and is willing to take the hit on the show.

Over at The Daily Beast, Maria Elena Fernandez has written a piece that explains both why Charlie Sheen continue to employed, and in two paragraphs, everything you need to know about the utter venality of advertising:

In turn, Sheen is more well-known and more polarizing than ever, according to his Q score. Immensely popular at the height of his run on the high-rated Two and a Half Men, Sheen is now familiar to 87 percent of Americans six years of age and older, a seven percent increase in his status prior to his Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour. But even as he’s become more of a household name, the number of people who dislike him also went up, increasing his negative score from 31 to 47 in just one year. The average celebrity registers a negative score of 26, Schafer said. Sheen, however, remains very popular among 18-to-34-year-old men, who happen to be the toughest demographic to reach in media and marketing.

“It looks like from everything that transpired, it was his female appeal that got hit the hardest,” Schafer said. “He’s a complete turn-off to women right now, whereas, back in the day, at the height of Two and a Half Men, he was way above average with female consumers. He’s lost most of his consumer strength with women of all ages and men 35 and older. But young males, 18 to 34, were relatively unaffected by all of his ranting and raving. They actually like him as much as they did before, so if you’re a marketing person and you’re seeing that you have someone that can really attract that hard-to-find consumer group, then maybe Charlie’s a good approach because he’s going to create both awareness and emotion.”

That statistic about how Sheen’s latest antics changes the perception of him is also pretty telling, too. Women, unshockingly, are unlikely to resonate with an addict with a record of violence against women. Older men get it, too. But younger men (and not all of them, of course) apparently still have tiger blood in their eyes. And the ability to reach them is one way of determining the financial value of a bad reputation. But I also feel like that divergence is a symptom of the real clashes we’ve seen over culture and sexism in the past few months. In some cases, men and women are just not seeing the same things.

A year ago, when Charlie Sheen was melting down for fun and profit on his post-Two and a Half Men tour, Rolling Stone wrote this about him:

Staring failure in the face and calling it “winning” — that’s the closest thing we have to an American religion. It’s the native tradition, from Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick to Ron Burgundy in Anchorman. And if that’s our religion, Charlie Sheen is our Vatican assassin warlock. Lots of us can look back on ruined lives, lost jobs, squandered fortunes. But to look back on it all and shrug, “I’m tired of pretending I’m not a total bitchin’ frickin’ rock star from Mars”? That’s up there with Ahab threatening to strike the sun if it insults him.

Now, in the same magazine’s pages, in a Q&A that’s out in print today and that I’m looking forward to getting my hands on, he’s singing a rather different tune: “Clearly, a guy gets fired, his relationships are in the toilet, he’s off on some fucking tour, there’s nothing ‘winning’ about any of that. I mean, how does a guy who’s obviously quicksanded, how does he consider any of it a victory? I was in total denial.” Of course, he also says “I mean, the shit works. Sorry, but it works. Anyway, I don’t see what’s wrong with a few drinks. What’s your drink? Tequila? Mine’s vodka. Straight, because I’ve always said that ice is for injuries, ha ha.” And this week, he melted down, cursing out a security guard at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

I remain curious to see Sheen’s new show, Anger Management, if only to see if FX president John Landgraf, who said he accepted the pitch because he was convinced Sheen wanted to reexamine his life and his relationships with women, is right. But there is something wearying about this kind of cycle: a fall from grace, a spectacular burnout, a withdrawal, and a reemergence. As with Britney Spears’ return to music-making, touring, and now acting as a judge on the X Factor, Sheen’s semi-contrition tour feels like recovery as a product, as a means of restoring the value of a profitable franchise. I’m queasy about the repackaging of the wrenching, non-linear processes that are recovery and reinvention into a consumable format.

Via Entertainment Weekly:

If FX was mildly nervous that Charlie Sheen’s public persona may affect his chances for a comeback, this information should come as a huge relief: EW has learned that test audiences who saw the pilot of his new comedy Anger Management recently were both pleased with his new half-hour comedy and eager to see the 46-year-old actor succeed in a new series.

The majority of men and women who attended a screening of the half-hour comedy in California’s San Fernando Valley last week rated the multi-camera pilot favorably, while over 80 percent gave Sheen an enthusiastic thumbs-up for his performance as an unorthodox therapist, according to one well-placed source. The pilot that also features the comeback of Brett Butler as a bartender played even better among women in the 18-34 and 18-49 demographic.

Overall, testing groups indicated that while they were well aware of Sheen’s fall from grace at CBS, they were still excited about his comeback and actually rooting for him to succeed, the source said. Some respondents even went so far as to say they were happy to see the actor in good health.

I’m open to, though skeptical of, the idea that I’ll like Anger Management. But I’m genuinely curious: does anyone have a theory about why people feel so charitably towards Charlie Sheen in particular? I know people like redemption narratives in general, but we also sure seem to relish kicking certain people when they’re down. I’d love a Sheen-specific explanation, especially since there’s no performance that makes me desperately long for him to return to former glory.

Guess we’ll have to wait for a longer cut to see more of that long-touted journey towards redemption and self-reflection:

I get that this is a riff on how Charlie Harper was killed off on Two and a Half Men. But it also inadvertently reveals how silly it is to suggest that this is any sort of grand comeback narrative. Charlie Sheen has made too much money for too many people for him ever to have to struggle to find work if he wants it.

In his Today show appearance with Matt Lauer last week, Charlie Sheen revealed something interesting about the terms of his new show, Anger Management, which is in development for FX. Apparently, his contract includes what Deadline is calling a “standard morals clause” because, as Sheen put it “There’s so much money at stake, I don’t blame them.”

If that’s the case, it means that FX is holding Sheen to a higher standard of behavior as a condition of his continued employment than CBS may have. When Sheen was fired from his network hit Two and a Half Men, one of the major issues in negotiating the terms of his dismissal was the unusual morals clause in his contract that stipulated he could only be terminated if Warner Brothers television believed he’d committed a felony. A standard morals clause normally gives a network much more latitude, saying that an actor can be fired if they behave in a way that brings negative attention to a show.

Given Sheen’s behavior, it seems appropriate that, even given his status as a big draw, he’d be held to the same standards as his fellow actors. FX president John Landgraf may not be able to define what sort of actions or behavior would make him consider an actor unemployable. But at least he’s giving himself wide latitude to fire this one.

The bridge is yours.

-More on what makes certain bloggers journalists.

-Dorkitechture.

-Betting is open on how long Oprah’s OWN network lasts.

-Much happier about Philip Seymour Hoffman coming to FX than Charlie Sheen.

-The Avengers cannot possibly get here fast enough:

It’s true Lindsay Lohan was not exceptionally good on Saturday Night Live this weekend, though the Real Housewives of Disney sketch was brilliant and Kristen Wiig should definitely play a dissolute princess again at some point:

But the main thing the furor over her appearance on the show made me think about was why the question of whether Lohan could—and should—be working again is even close to as heated as discussions about Chris Brown and Charlie Sheen. Vulture wants to know why she keeps getting chances in the industry (and totally mischaracterizes her performance and character in Prairie Home Companion, for the record). Gawker treats the question of whether she was good on the show as a Zen koan in need of extensive contemplation.

Lindsay Lohan has absolutely had some issues. She appears to have had substantial problems with substance abuse. She stole some jewelry and was punished for her. She apparently behaved somewhat badly on the set of her movie Georgia Rule—Jane Fonda, who has not had such a hot streak picking projects herself lately, complained about Lohan. She’s potentially a lesbian in a climate that can be pretty limiting to the career prospects of gay women. She also has a notoriously dysfunctional family, who have placed obligations on her ranging from having to support her mother to dealing with her father who’s done everything from condemn Lohan’s relationship with Samantha Ronson to be arrested for battering his girlfriend. That’s quite a bit to put up with, but Hollywood’s had quite a nice little streak of rehabilitating women with similar issues. Britney Spears has a steady boyfriend, a resurrected career, and custody of her kids bad. Nicole Richie’s overcome both eating and substance issues to launch a successful jewelry line and have a couple of deeply adorable munchkins. Paris Hilton, the most notorious of a generation of Hollywood party girls, has quieted down. Given the extent of Lohan’s talent and the trajectory of her peers, it’s totally reasonable that she’d be given subsequent chances.

Charlie Sheen has also had some issues. Unlike Lohan, however, the harm he’s done is as much to other people as it is himself. He’s got substance abuse issues he’s been treated for repeatedly. He’s also shot, strangled, and thrown a woman to the ground. And if it’s true that he’s been largely professional and together when he’s on the job, throwing a months-long temper tantrum about his current and former employer and getting a $25 million settlement is at least as costly and distracting as anything Lohan ever did. And Sheen’s talent-based glory days are at least as far from his present as Lohan’s are from hers—maybe even further. It’s pretty bizarre that doing harm to yourself makes you a pathetic object of condemnation but doing harm to others earns you supporters who are eager to forgive you or regard you as a badass.