The Scene and Herd

From the first paragraph of The Globe’s obituary this morning:

Robert S. McNamara, the cerebral former U.S. secretary of defence who was vilified for carrying out the Vietnam War, then devoted himself to helping the world’s poorest nations, died today.

Mercy, that’s heavy. I wonder when McNamara made peace with the idea that his obituary would hold more references to Vietnam than his penitent work with poor countries. Speaking as someone who has zero connection to Vietnam, I admire McNamara for trying to pull it together at the end there. He knew his reputation (soul?) was permanently tarnished, but still tried to make good. Most powerful people with guilt on their heads maintain a fake innocence with gusto, and a bad attitude ‘till the bloody end. 

Which brings me to the Chris Brown fiasco. It’s been on my mind. 

Chris Brown could not understand why he was not allowed to perform during the Michael Jackson tribute at the BET awards, and I think that’s weird. His confusion is confusing. He beat up his girlfriend. Why hasn’t somebody (Chris Brown’s lawyer/agent/mom, I’m looking at you) told him that people don’t like that sort of thing? Assuming his participation was nixed by Jay-Z, Brown twittered, “Jay-Z is mad childish. Never keep a person from paying there respects.”

Aside from the fact that he wrote “there,” (always troubling when an angry person does that) is it not totally bizarre that the Rihanna incident seems to have slipped his mind? It only happened a couple of months ago. McNamara had Vietnam on his mind for forty years. I expect Chris Brown to mull things over at least until his community service is finished. I think that’s fair, if not exactly proportionate.

I expect this from Brown for the simple reason that I think everyone should at least have as much class as Robert McNamara, and hopefully a bit more.