The Institute (協会)

This absolutely infuriates me. I stopped buying R. Kelly albums and turning the station when comes on after this happened. What's even sadder, is when I lived in Chicago people LOVED him and defended him on the regular.

I was watching the This Week on Sunday morning and George Will, who I rarely agree with, said something very interesting. Basically he said that many of the problems in the Black community have little to do with racism and had more to do with what he termed "cultural issues". And as much as I hate to admit it, there was some very real truth to that statement. And here is evidence to support that statement.

Anthony,

There is no outrage over this because most everyone in our culture has lost the capacity for real moral outrage.

There are a host of reasons for this but the one that most applies to celebrities, I think, is that for most people celebrities aren't real.

Oh, at some intellectual level people acknowledge that there is an actual person we are referring to when we speak of R. Kelly, but most people don't have any sense of him as a flesh and blood entity.

Because we live in a media culture, most people think of R. Kelly and other celbrities as living inside their radios or televisions. Celebrities exist at a remove for most people. They know celebrities only as products or perhaps as fictional characters.

So, because R. Kelly doesn't truly feel real for most people, they aren't any more inclined to get upset about his crimes than the crimes of, say, the Joker.

Michelle Malkin is waging a bit of a fight against Akon (as one of Verizon's featured "artists" and some controversy over a You Tube video of his Trinidad show) and you can follow updates on her blog. michelle malkin.com without the space in her name.

Five years and no trial date is an unconsienable miscarriage of justice. Even for a celebrity, that seems excessive. Tam and Dean have both made excellent points about why this is so. And what is really infuriating is that these situations are ignored by men like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. If they were truly leaders, they would be outraged at this behavior in celebrities--who ought to be role-models. Ignoring this behavior and delaying justice is merely enabling the offenders rather. In my opinion, it makes the enablers just as culpable as the offenders.

If you have money you walk (free) ...

One thing that makes me very angry is that he put a gospel type song on a recent LP (surrounded by his usual sex, sex and more sex songs) and Christians played it on gospel shows !

If you doubt that the rich tend to get off easier than others, just say "Orenthal" ten times and you'll come to your senses. It's a shame, but it's true. (unless, of course, the feds are using the testimony of perjurers to make the claim that you lied to investigators)

And I stopped buying R. Kelly's albums when--never mind, I never bought one.