Should We Forgive Chris Brown?

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It has been quite a hard week for fragile flower petal, Chris Brown. While promoting his new album Don’t Hate Me Because I Beat Women Up (J/K. It’s called F.A.M.E.) on Good Morning America, Brown fielded some tough questions about that time he beat the shit out of his then-girlfriend Rihanna. Appearing visibly annoyed during the interview, Brown later threw a tantrum in his dressing room in which he cracked a window with a chair, screamed at GMA producers, and removed his shirt for some inexplicable reason. He then took to his Twitter to say, “I’m so over people bringing this past s**t up!!! Yet we praise Charlie sheen and other celebs for there bulls**t.” He has since deleted the tweet. Last night, Brown appeared on BETs 106 & Park to clear the air and essentially say, “I’m sorry if you were offended by my insane meltdown, but I’m tired of talking about the whole Rihanna thing.”

Chris Brown may be tired of talking about his sordid past, but are we? Right after the incident with Rihanna, Brown was vilified by the general public and sent to live as a pop star pariah. His follow-up record Graffiti tanked, and the general consensus seemed to be that a killer pop song < A freak who beats up women.  Since then, however, things have changed. His new record has spawned three Number One singles and holds the top spot on iTunes, showing that people are ready to forgive him for being a douchebag and embrace those killer hip-pop hooks of his again!

But we shouldn’t forgive and forget just yet. You see, Chris Brown is sort of a turd. Not only does he like to slap the ladies around, he’s also homophobic.  And if his meltdown at GMA this week proves anything, it’s that he still suffers from severe anger management issues—the same issues that probably led him to abuse his girlfriend. Quite frankly, he also doesn’t seem to be very apologetic about anything either. His bratty behavior has shown that he doesn’t necessarily still feel guilt over what happened. Rather, he just seems annoyed that it could derail the success of his new super hot Top 40-filled album. I’m not saying that Chris Brown has to wear a scarlet letter on his chest for the rest of his life. But he has to accept that it will forever be a part of the narrative of his career. If a journalist wants to bring it up, he has to deal with it — not destroy a dressing room and scream at producers. Like I said, having that kind of angry reaction shows that Brown is not out of the woods in dealing with his personal problems. He still has the capacity to be a violent raging asshole. And for that, we should put Chris Brown back in the oven for a bit because he ain’t done yet.

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