The best we can hope for as adult human beings is to be even slightly as vocal about Rihanna when somebody has wronged us. The woman is fearless — FEARLESS. Let's talk about if she was right this time, though.
Last week, CBS was scheduled to air a pre-recorded segment with Rihanna that was going to run before Thursday Night Football. Well, it got pulled due to run Ray Rice coverage (fair enough — a pop song isn't exactly conducive to talking about a serious social issue) — but then, on top of that, CBS admitted that Rihanna's history with domestic abuse kind of played into that decision. (Since, lest we forget, Ray Rice abused his now-wife to the point of knocking her unconscious back in February.)
Well, Rihanna wasn't happy.
Taking to Twitter, Rihanna had some choice words for the network.
"CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday?" she tweeted. "No, fuck you! Y'all are sad for penalizing me for this."
Then: "The audacity…"
The intro, CBS explained, was a new version of 2009's "Run This Town" paired with a comedy bit. Instead, CBS focused almost exclusively on issues of domestic violence and the NFL, so it's not like the song was pulled without bankable programming put in its place.
"We thought journalistically and from a tone standpoint, we needed to have the appropriate tone and coverage," CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus told Sports Illustrated last week. "A lot of production elements we wanted in the show are being eliminated because of time or tone."
As for Chris Brown's assault on Rihanna, that was "among several factors considered but not the overriding tone."
But… hm. Okay. To pull a pop song and comedy bit the night we're talking about domestic violence is understandable. But to punish Rihanna for what Ray Rice did is fucked up. I mean, if CBS hadn't said that, it would've been better. But they did say that. Meaning we're still not dealing with issues of domestic violence very well. Meaning this is a lot messier than just a pulled song. Meaning Rihanna has a right to be upset, but CBS also had a right — comments about Brown aside — to pull that bit and save it for this week.
What do you guys think about this?
