Stormfront doesn't sicken me as much as the Grammys • Internet Hugbox

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Stormfront doesn’t sicken me as much as the Grammys

Most days I’ll peruse Andrew Bolt’s comment section. If I’m feeling particularly chipper I’ll give stormfront a look in to see what the deranged fraction of a fraction of a percent believes our society should look like. Normally these kind of flights of fancy are source of humour at the idiocy of a subset of our society but I’m left rather despondent today. For those of you who haven’t been living beneath a rock you’d know that woman beater and apparent lyricist of note Chris Brown presented at that Grammys this year. If you’d like more information on why that is terrible I wish to not inundate you so I’ll only outline two sources of note.

Just wait and watch the video and read the article. I’d assume you’re pretty fucking angry, particularly after reading the backlash on Usher for expressing ‘too soon man’ to Chris. This really isn’t even the half of it, as we saw today on twitter. Apparently someone being charged with assault and then basically getting a slap on the wrist for hospitalising their partner is diminished because that partner may have allegedly returned to them. If you were an idiot you’d make a bad taste ‘sucker for punishment’ joke but I don’t believe you are an idiot. I think you’d understand that that kind of behaviour is indicative of a deeper psychological issue, rather than a tacit fucking validation that brutally assaulting a woman so violently she ends up in a hospital is acceptable. I mean, I’d assume you’d in some way divine that using basic logic. Apparently that idea has passed a lot of people by.

The most disgusting thing I’ve seen all day is the comments white-anting what Rhianna went through by asserting (WITHOUT EVIDENCE) that she returned to a relationship with Mr Brown. The logic of that scenario is so tortured that the Obama Administration is wishing to use the scene of it as a black site. What is more sinister is people pointing to past greats who assaulted women that we admired and respected - people like James Brown or Sean Connery and saying we’ve tolerated domestic abuse then, why not now? I’d say the main reason being at that point in time we also tolerated segregation and disenfranchising the indigenous but please, don’t strain yourself trying to provide deluded moral equivalences to justify your own base behaviour.

The second most disgusting thing I’ve seen all night is this

and this

Now obviously this isn’t indicative of the overall sentiment of society - the brusque and impressive rebuttal of the toleration of this violent and pathetic tool on twitter and elsewhere has been uplifting and heartening. To know that so many people, some of them even politicians (hell Kate Ellis put the boot in as well) find this lack of testicular and moral fortitude of the Grammys disgusting is uplifting. That said, the idea that women who have been assaulted or abused are facing a society in which celebrity is a barrier to true justice sickens anyone who understands what justice truly is.

The pure force and rage put forward by millions of people against the utter navel-gazing bullshit of the Grammys on this topic (so much so that they declared themselves the REAL VICTIMS of it) is affirming in ways that text cannot fully convey.

One quite cogent point was made today on twitter, “Had Chris Brown hit a white woman, would he be invited back so swiftly?”, one that I think Daniel Richardson encompassed brillianty

I can’t imagine the person who bloodied Katy Perry becoming a music industry darling.

Hell this is the same event that as @aurosan on twitter said

Remember when Adam Lambert kissed a man on TV and was blacklisted? Remember when Chris Brown beat Rihanna and won a Grammy?

The Grammys are by no stretch of the imagination to be taken as a moral arbiter. They are a professional group who value the output and success of someone who has violently assaulted a woman, over the safety and privacy of that woman. They not only don’t deserve our patronage - they openly deserve our scorn. The fact that these people, as vacuous and morally devoid as they are, are considered arbiters of talent in the music world shows how dearly competition is needed. Maybe someone with a spine and a basic sense of human decency will decide to throw their hat into the ring.

It’d be nice to have people criticise them for their actual actions, rather than who they deign deserves an award. The only real way we’re going to have any impact on this industry is by lobbying bands that have won awards to return them out of disgust. Any band or artist that accepted a Grammy tonight is sending the message that domestic abuse is okay as long as you’re a celebrity. I’d like to think those musicians had some artistic integrity, after all it’s sorely lacking at the Grammys.