By Deirdre Spilman
Opinion Editor
When I think of Chris Brown, a few key things come to mind. I think of his amazing songs like “Run It” and “Turn up the Music” along with his fantastic dance moves and high-energy performances.
Sadly, this is not the case for everybody.
More recently, Brown has been associated with anger issues, a violent temper and the infamous incident with singer and then-girlfriend Rihanna on the eve of the 2009 Grammy Awards.
Yes, he did physically abuse her, and that is completely horrid, but he doesn’t deserve to have this one isolated incident plague his reputation for the rest of his life.
After Brown pled guilty to abusing Rihanna, he was ordered to complete six months of community service. He was also put on probation for five years, according to a Feb. 6 Associated Press article. This incident was almost four years ago, so you would think people would have moved on and allowed him to do the same.
That’s not the case here. As soon as people started to accept him back into the spotlight as something other than a “woman-beater,” those who dwell in the past are still trying to pull him back down. A ridiculous motion was filed this Tuesday by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office in a ludicrous attempt to revoke Brown’s probation, saying “there is no credible evidence he completed his community service sentence for beating Rihanna,” said Deputy District Attorney Mary Murray in a Feb. 5 Associated Press article.
Of course he’s angry. I would be too if the world saw me as a villain and my private life was getting an unnecessary amount of negative exposure. There are people whose rap sheets are much worse than Brown’s, people who make him look about as harmful as a schoolyard bully. However, because they are not in the public eye, we will most likely never hear of them.
As for the accusation that he did not complete his service because he was unsupervised, whose fault is that? There should have been people assigned to monitor his service just like there would be with other offenders of the law. If he really is as dangerous as people are claiming, why would you send him out into the community unsupervised? All of the blame does not fall on Brown’s shoulders here.
These claims are just a futile effort to tarnish his name once again. It is petulant and one mistake does not mean he is deserving of this type of treatment. Even Rihanna has forgiven him, and if she has, then nobody else has the right to be mad at him anymore.
He is only human. Everyone makes mistakes and although this one was quite large, he will never be able to move on with his life when people insist on keeping his reputation in the gutter. Get rid of the grudge you are holding against him and move on with your lives so he can.
