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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When Chris Brown, who in 2009 beat his then-girlfriend Rihanna on the way to a Grammys pre-party, got two performing slots at this year’s awards show, objecting to his presence there was relatively uncomplicated. His crime was relatively recent, and Brown seemed to have little sense that he’d done something wrong, throwing temper tantrums when asked about his assault in interviews and acting as if his Grammy win was a rebuke to the people who were unfairly judging him. And suggesting that he shouldn’t be given a high-profile spot, much less two, at the Grammys was a way of rooting for, or siding with, Rihanna. But in the time since, events have guaranteed that the state of their relationship will be a continued story—and suggested how complicated it’s going to be to find a way to talk about it productively.

First, the news broke that Rihanna had asked Brown to her birthday party. Then, she released a remix of her latest song, “Birthday Cake,” featuring Brown. If the pair aren’t dating again, it’s clear that Brown is back in Rihanna’s life. Which puts those of us who would rather not see folks in his industry bestowing their most advantageous opportunities on Brown rather than someone who didn’t beat a fellow artist so badly she couldn’t perform when she was allotted one of those slots, in a position of not being on the same page as the woman we’d really like to be supporting.

This is not an uncommon dynamic, of course. As Jaclyn Friedman points out, women who are trying to leave their abusers tend to go back, a lot, before they finally decide to either stay or leave for good. The dilemma between wanting to respect a woman as an independent agent while also being worried for her is not one that’s unique to celebrities. And it’s not a problem that anyone’s come up with a fool-proof solution for, or we’d be a lot better at helping women leave the men who abuse them, be they famous or simply our friends.

One sure way not to move the conversation in anything like a productive direction, though, is to challenge Chris Brown to a fight. Which is what C.M. Punk, a professional wrestler, decided it would be a productive thing to do. There’s really no circumstance in which a white man talking about curb stomping a black man is an elevating threat. And whatever Chris Brown needs, it’s emphatically not a beating. Punk could take a note from retired pro wrestler Mick Foley, who’s become an amazing advocate for victims of sexual assault. This isn’t about completing a cycle of retribution. And it’s not about teaching people about who it is or isn’t honorable to fight.

The bridge is yours.

-It’s National Arts and Humanities Month!

-It’s official: Glee is watchable again.

-Best birthday present ever: a chance to see Beauty and the Beast on the big screen again.

-If we’re going to have a Mr. Ed remake, can Lil’ Sebastian play Mr. Ed?

-Also great birthday presents — great new Rihanna:

There was something sort of sweet about Republican contender Tim Pawlenty’s admission last week that he’s fond of Lady Gaga, particularly the acoustic rendition of “Born This Way” from her HBO concert movie:

But however charming I find the Minnesota candidate’s confessed affinity for the pop phenomenon who’s also been one of the more politically active and effective celebrities of recent years, it’s entirely predictable that Republican commentators are jumping all over Pawlenty for it. Specifically, Laura Ingraham took to the airwaves this morning to declare that it was “idiotic” for Pawlenty to say he likes Gaga because both she and Rihanna are contributing to “cultural decay” in America.

If by “cultural decay” Ingraham meant a death of creativity, she has a point. “Born This Way” has clear and much-remarked upon similarities to Madonna songs. And David LaChapelle and Philip Paulus are suing Rihanna for ripping off their fashion photography for the video for “S&M,” the song that has Ingraham in a snit:

But freighting two 20-something pop queens with the downfall of American society? Not hardly. Gaga’s music is full of a deep skepticism about sex. In her personal life, she’s said that she didn’t enjoy sex until she was in a stable, monogamous relationship, a more realistic compromise on the evangelical promise that sex will be better if you wait for marriage. As for Rihanna, I don’t think Ingraham has to worry has to worry that teenagers are going to rush out and buy designer ball gags and harnesses. That stuff is expensive.

The weather’s deeply insane in Washington, and I’m spending a bunch of the day inside a theater watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II (the sacrifices I make for this job). So in honor of the brain-melting heat and to keep you amused while I’m gone, a playlist of gender-flipped covers, where the singer of the cover is different than the gender of the person who originated the song.

1. Xiu Xiu’s awesomely creepy-sounding cover of Rihanna’s “Only Girl (In the World),” which inspired me.

2. Nothing beats the fragile version of “God Only Knows,” that the Beach Boys laid down on their “Live in London” album. But Petra Haden’s version has a lovely serenity to it:

3. And where Haden brings calm to the Beach Boys, Dolly Parton adds a nervous energy to the Beatles’ “Help”:

4. While in turn, Sisters of Mercy turn “Jolene” into a horror movie (HT: Zack Stentz):

After our discussion of Quentin Tarantino’s latest yesterday, the question of revenge fantasies and art has been on my mind, so when the Parents Television Council emailed me yesterday to warn me about Rihanna’s latest, of course I went to check it out.* Megan Franko, the spokeswoman at PTC, wrote “In my 30 years of viewing BET, I have never witnessed such a cold, calculated execution of murder in primetime.” It’s true, the murder that opens the “Man Down” video is fairly disconcerting:

But I think focusing on that opening sequence ignores the fairly important work that’s happening in the rest of the video. Because really, this is a video about what it’s like to be sexually assaulted. And I think it’s really useful to have someone who is as big a star as Rihanna deciding to play a victim, and to play a victim in this specific scenario: she flirts with a guy at a club but turns him down when he wants more, he follows her when she heads home, corners her in an isolated location, she fights, but ultimately he overpowers her and she stops fighting. That look of fear in her eyes when she surrenders matters, and it’s powerful.

When you’re being assaulted, it’s not really surprising that at some point you might do a horrible back-of-the-envelope calculation and decide that it’s better to get raped and try to deal with it later than to die. Getting sexually assaulted is not a moment when you have perfect information—like certain knowledge of whether your attacker will kill or grievously injure you if you continue to resist—on which to base your decisions, or at which your theoretical principals are more important than your survival. It’s a disaster for rape and assault victims that cops, judges, and juries still don’t consistently understand that the decision to submit is not a decision to consent. And if this video helps anyone understand that, I can live with the head shot. Which, by the way, I think every line in the song, suggests was a really bad thing to have done.

*NB: I assume this is what everyone does when the PTC puts out an alert, right? I sometimes wonder if they should start complaining about utterly random stuff just to send us on wild goose chases.