Something doesn't add up.

I almost never post about celebrities, 'cause I really don't give a damn, but in spite of having only a tiny clue who they are I'm going to post a wee bit about the whole Chris Brown/Rihanna thing because it is merely a small, public part of a huge problem.

The brief synopsis for those who might be even more firmly under their rocks is this: The night before the Grammy Awards, after leaving a before-event party during which they were seen acting upset with one another, Chris Brown "allegedly" beat the living daylights out of Rihanna. Which is to say, a woman matching her description, with injuries apparently requiring medical attention, identified Chris Brown as her attacker, and the next day he turned himself in instead of performing on TV (she, for fairly obvious reasons, also missed her performance).

We are left with a larger-than-these-two issue. Domestic violence. They're not married but have apparently been dating for a couple of years now. I am certain there are factors here which don't affect a lot of the poor white trash who are typically on the DV scene, but let's be honest with ourselves: it's much the same. You have a man with a sense of entitlement, and one of the things he thinks he's entitled to is his woman, and she must act exactly the way he wants her to, or she deserves to have the shit whacked out of her. She brings it all on herself, you know?

We're all well aware of the issues there.

Here's what sickens me, and the part I didn't really know about before, having always been friends with the victim rather than the villain. There are a lot of people making excuses for this pile of human excrement, and saying or at least implying that it is incumbent upon Rihanna to forgive him.

I happen to have read the issue of People magazine which discusses the issue. Chris Brown is a great boy, donchaknow? He's never ever ever done anything like this before. All his hometown friends have a hard time believing it was him, 'cause after all he watched his stepdaddy beat on his mama and there is no such thing as the cycle of violence. This has to be a one-time only thing, and we all need to leave Chris Brown and Rihanna alone so they can work through their problems on their own.

The hell! No, no, no, they should most certainly not be left alone. Let's send Rihanna off with Tina Turner for a weekend (or at least a copy of La Turner's autobiography) and Chris Brown off with Anthony Geisler. I pray that woman surrounds herself with real friends, and that anyone who tells her to make nice is promptly thrown out of the room and barred reentry. The time for Christian forgiveness can come later. Sometime after the trial.

I can hope this is a one-off thing for him. That he just snapped and he has never done it before and will never do it again. That the first time he hit her, Rihanna did exactly the right thing by calling the police, having her injuries documented, and naming her abuser. Anyone who has a passing familiarity with relationship violence will know to doubt this, however.

I don't generally think that we should hold celebrities to be any sort of role models, but in this case I will make an exception. Only because the sort of people who typically find themselves on the receiving end of this sort of thing are typically interested in their favorite celebrities & Rihanna is a pop singer (I have no idea what Chris Brown does, other than he sings too. I think.) so they'll know about her. Maybe, just maybe if she stays strong & smart and follows this thing through to its rightful conclusion--asshole in jail--some other girl out there will have the ovaries to follow through in her own situation.