Chris Brown, poster child for rage, found himself in the midst of a Twitter war with comedian and television commenter Andy Levy. It started when Levy retweeted one of Brown’s tweets last Wednesday.
After feeling the virtual wrath of ‘Team Breezy,’ Levy took to Red Eye on the Fox News channel to uh, apologize.
Despite the Fox News connection, I’m siding with Levy. Brown’s defenders claim that everyone should forgive Brown since Rihanna has. There’s a difference though, between ‘forgiving’ someone and completely condoning violent behavior as though the guy did nothing wrong. He’s not some loveable pop star in my eyes. He’s a dude who fucked up big time and needs to man up and accept responsibility for it – if that means a couple of jokes at his expense, so be it. Better than getting a physical beat down, isn’t it? It’s not like Andy Levy (or anyone, for that matter) threatened Brown with violence. Andy Levy is not the problem. Andy Levy is not the one who beats up women and throws chairs out of windows. Andy Levy is not the one who needs anger management.
The troublesome thing about Brown and his fans is that by defending his actions, they’re basically admitting that what he did was okay. In society, we don’t celebrate a man who beats his girlfriend or wife. We don’t champion him. We don’t forgive him. A couple of pop singles and the ability to do a half-assed Michael Jackson impression shouldn’t change the way we treat a woman beater. Sorry I’m not sorry.
