I really liked the first half of this article. It helped me understand the issue from the female perspective better and it did a good job of pointing out how many in the media and the public dropped the ball on the coverage of the story. Chris Brown was in the wrong for hitting Rihanna. Ken Ehrlich was wrong for saying that the Grammy’s were the victim of the incident. Victim blaming, in any fashion, is wrong. He definitely shouldn’t have performed at the BET Awards in 2009 and shouldn’t be performing at the Grammy’s at least until his sentence is up. As a society we must do more to draw attention to the horrors of domestic violence, and we must do more to reach out to victims of abuse. More people should have come to Rihanna’s defense at the time, including, admittedly, myself. However, I don’t think its quite appropriate to equate the Grammy’s insensitive business decision to a political one that potentially harms thousands of women without health insurance. To me its a matter of a selfish act done to make money vs. a political act that was basically a threat to an organization and women everywhere. Practically speaking, Komen’s behavior was much worse.

Also, and this is the English major in me speaking, the conclusion of Miss Paluska’s article seemed to imply that Brown wasn’t reported to the authorities (even though she previously mentioned that he turned himself in), and that he wasn’t punished to the full extent of the law (I think it is a fair conversation to discuss what that punishment should be in Brown’s case, but he was punished by the court system). She also made it very personal, which I think kind of defeated the purpose of the article. If her point was that the public and the media should do more to address domestic violence towards women (again, no disagreement here), then she should call the public and the media to action as opposed to telling us that Chris Brown won’t be invited to her next birthday party.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Sasha Paluska vs. Chris Brown (not that it should be)