Forgiving All My Enemies

Chris Brown doesn't want to be a minute man.  And he's sick of everybody bringing up that sh*t from the past. His latest album F.A.M.E. was released last month with the singles Yeah x3 and Look at me now dropping a little bit beforehand.  The album sounds good with a decent dose of RnB music history, rappers behind it and some undeniable club bangers.

Being that Chris Brown is best known by most Angelenos (Americans?) for beating his girlfriend pretty badly on at least one occasion, you'd think most intelligent people might choose not to support Mr. Brown by becoming fans of his music.   He admitted guilt and was charged with 2 felonies for assault and making criminal threats following the beating. And a couple years later almost 500,000 people bought F.A.M.E within the first month after it's release.

Should we be concerned that so many of us are willing to forget about sustaining a moral compass because the media tells us a product is desirable?  Or is the real issue that the American public is so over saturated with media of both the corporate and independent variety that Chris Brown's situation has become forgettable in the first place?  Perhaps, we all want things like this to be forgettable so that we can feel safe that our own reprehensible mistakes can be wiped from our own personal histories.  Possibly the old 'moral compass' is irrelevant 235 years after capitalism became our religion.

Whatever the cause may be, we let Mr. Brown tell us to take a chance with him, girls, because you know that he won't do you no harm. Even though we have seen the harm he has done to other women with our own eyes.  And we are all one.  And some things do not change.  This is a lesson often learned the hard way.  Is forgiveness always a good thing?  Are there people and things that are just plain unforgiveable?  Is it important to learn to forgive the unforgivable?

Luckily, most of us still have a bit of control left about what we publicize and what we don't.  Maybe Mr. Brown has been a victim, too.  The collective has a gang mentality and the damage that can be done by bullying/gangbanging is sometimes really difficult to repair.  Because so many of us want to hear his music (all girlbashing and distasteful referencing of girlbashing in his lyrics aside) Chris Brown does not have any control over what aspects of his life are presented to the public.   He is forced to dance for us like a puppet and we feed him Benjamins in return.   Look at him now.