How many more chances does Chris Brown get and why do his fans continue to condone whatever he does?
If we managed Chris Brown, we would keep him off of Twitter for good, take away his Instagram account, and make him take a complete break from any public appearances for at least six months.
As you know, the boy who can”t keep his mouth shut was at it again on Sunday when he got in a Twitter fight with writer/comic Jenny Johnson. To be fair, Johnson, who we had never heard of before Sunday, provoked Brown when she responded to an innocuous tweet by Brown with an insulting reply.
instead of not taking the bait, Brown then immediately escalated the online feud by, as abusive men do, turning the fight into one suggesting sexual acts and calling Johnson a gardening tool (though we”re quite sure he meant “ho,” instead of “hoe”). It went downhill from there and ended with Brown deleting his Twitter account. (We”ll see how long that lasts. For now, he”s taking his rants to Instagram. Same persecution complex, different venue).
Brown has gotten predictably boring in that if he is treated badly– or perceives that he is– he fires back with a response that is wildly inappropriate. He brings a gun to a knife fight every single time, such as throwing a chair at a window at “Good Morning America” after he didn”t like being asking about beating up Rihanna. He also has to keep apologizing for making gay slurs.
What Brown has never seemed to grasp is that as a public figure, he is going to be a lightning rod for criticism. That just comes with the territory. And yet he has never developed the ability to walk away.
This is where management comes in. Before Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any other social media where artists can communicate directly with fans, managers and publicists could serve as a buffer between an act and his or her fans. Now, however, there is no filter. Most acts don”t need one, but Brown is desperately and pathetically in need of someone who will sit him down and tell him to stop it. That person”s next step will probably be packing up his or her things and finding a new job, but if Brown hears it enough, maybe it will sink in.
Additionally, and this is the part that really seems beyond the pale, is that it”s clear that Brown sees himself as a victim. If people would just, as his latest single addressed, not judge him, everything would be just fine. It”s our fault that he keeps getting into rumbles.
We live in a time when bad behavior very rarely generates consequences. For a short black-out period after he beat up Rihanna in 2009 where he was treated like a pariah in some quarters, virtually everyone was willing to forgive him, whether it was radio or the Grammys or even the Grammy voters, who awarded him with a Grammy this year.
Yet after a carefully-managed apology about Rihanna, all he has done the past three years is show that he does not have a handle on his anger issues and that he has zero impulse control…whether it”s on during a live interview or on Twitter.
Brown needs a time-out, but given that his fans are willing to forgive him anything and, other than people in Guyana protesting his now-cancelled gig, there seems to be no downside to being an abusive, hot-tempered, threatening, ill-behaved star. So expect more of the same.