It just never stops with this guy. Chris Brown, the central Virginia native famous for a half-dozen or so top 20 singles and habit of behaving like a spoiled brat in public, is back in the news again, and as usual, it's for less-than-upright behavior. Specifically, Los Angeles County attorneys are alleging that Brown faked his Virginia community service documents, which were intended to satisfy his probation requirements in the wake of the 2009 charges for his assault on Rihanna.
They're not pulling this out of the air, either--the Los Angeles Times reports that one of his trash pickup claims is for a day during which he was photographed at a charity event in Washington DC, while another encompasses a time period during which flight records indicate he was catching a plane to Cancun. Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Mary A. Murray says that the DA's investigation into Brown's community service records found "significant discrepancies indicating at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting." Oof. For the record, Brown's lawyer, Mark Geragos, claims that the LA County DA's office is making "scurrilous, libelous and defamatory statements" against his client. Uh huh. You'll pardon us if we're giving the DA the benefit of the doubt on this one.
More interesting than all of this is Brown's own contribution to the discussion--a rant posted on his private Instagram account and made public by the kind (or at least gossipy) souls at E Online, who were nice enough to provide us with the above screencapture. In case you don't feel like scanning through it all, the money quotes are as follows [spelling/grammar/capitalization/punctuation preserved as written]:
"yall tell me not to pay attention to it how can I not when its on my radio,tv and everything else...Even if I did relax I wouldn't stop hearing about it"
"I can handle the hate but enough is enough yo!!"
"Im a human being and I honestly think I deserve respect im sick of being accused...Im Tired yall just don't understand I've been going through this shit since I was 19 years old.. you cant sit here and tell me to clam down, when am I gonna get a positive outcome out of anything I do?"
"Im TIRED do you read me im tired!!!!! I'm not gonna sit here and play victim, Im just tired of this shit..."
"A day in my shoes is a day in hell, believe it or not!"
Seriously, can you believe this guy?
Before I go on. I don't want to seem like I believe people who make mistakes, up to and including committing violent crimes, should be permanently written off. I don't believe that. Once someone does their time, I believe they should be allowed a chance to start over and rehabilitate their image through their behavior. I'm just not seeing any sort of change in behavior from Chris Brown that would indicate that he's learned a lesson or is attempting to improve his behavior. For starters, there's the fact that the LA County DA seems to have significant evidence that Brown tried to get out of the community service he was supposed to serve as punishment for his assault against Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time. That assault happened when he was 19, so you've got to assume the never-explained "it" in the above Instagram rant is the assault charge.
And sure, I'm hardly the first or even the hundredth person on the internet or in the media to rake Brown over the coals for his behavior during and after that incident. But considering that the only thing he's ever done to indicate remorse for that assault is to cry during a 2010 televised performance of Michael Jackson's "Man In the Mirror," it's hard for me (and a lot of other people) to feel sympathy for his "day[s] in hell." This current rant is just the latest in a series of incidents over the past two years in which Brown has thrown temper tantrums as a result of people bringing up the Rihanna case. During a 2011 interview with Good Morning America's Robin Roberts, Brown was asked some pointed questions about the incident. He didn't explode on air, but after the interview ended, he went back to his dressing room and threw a chair through a window, then stormed out of the studio, bailing on a planned on-air performance. Just after the incident, Brown tweeted, "I'm so over people bring this past shit up!!" only to delete the tweet moments later.
More recently, Brown got into a fight with Drake at a New York nightclub last summer--and apparently it was over Rihanna. Meanwhile, just last month, Brown got into a fight with Frank Ocean outside of an LA recording studio--over a parking space, apparently, which is petty enough. And now the word has gotten out that Brown and his crew called Frank, who is openly bisexual, a "faggot" during the altercation. Granted, this last one has little to do with Rihanna, but if we're looking for evidence that Brown has indeed, as Michael once sang, "changed his ways," stories like this don't exactly send a positive message.
Brown may be tired of having to hear about how much people still hold his assault on Rihanna, not to mention his other violent behavior and ignorant statements, against him, but until he makes an effort to correct his violent and immature behavior, rants like this one on Instagram will continue to sound like the whining of a petulant child who doesn't understand why he's in time-out. Considering that Brown was the aggressor in the incident that started it all, it boggles the mind that it has been he, and not Rihanna, who has done the vast majority of public complaining about the incident in the years since it took place. Until he stops throwing tantrums and shooting off his mouth, though, there will continue to be a significant amount of people who can't hear his name without remembering those pictures of Rihanna after he assaulted her. And that's exactly how it should be.