News of 19 year old Chris Brown withdrawing his nominations from Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Awards was well received by parents, and maybe even a few kids. Brown's nominations, submitted on-line by children for the KCA “Favorite Song” and “Favorite Male Singer”, became controversial for some in light of his recent violent behavior with girlfriend Rihanna. From on-line protests to on-line petitions, the public spoke out against these so-called role models being part of a show whose main audience are children and teens.
Until a few days ago, Nickelodeon stood behind Brown's nominations, but after pressure from groups like Twittermoms.com started to rise, Brown decided to remove himself from the awards list. Unfortunately, his and Rihanna's photos had already been plastered all over Nickelodeon's special awards issue which reached many family's mailboxes to very mixed emotions. Petroville, an outraged mommy, wrote on her blog, “Nickelodeon should be ashamed of themselves”. I agree.
Photo Petroville.com
Since I'm not one to over protect my kids, especially about issues they will see and hear all over the news, radio and TV, we'll be tunning in on the 28th to watch the usually entertaining awards show. But something does bother me about Viacom and Nickelodeon's attitude about Brown's nominations for the awards show. The principle of this matter is what gets to me, and frankly, I think this one boils down to money. Brown and Rihanna are cash cows for their respective labels, and all those agents and publicists in between trying to get their cut. Instead of looking-out for the little eyes and ears they influence with their programimng, the execs simply waited to the last minute hoping they could get the singers' names out there, and regain valuable name-recognition time with fans. Not happening … yet.
For now, the lesson we should take away from this is: You misbehave, you get punished. Very simple. Very old school. Zero tolerance for this violent display of non-affection, especially between celeb teens! We have enough out-of-control youth gunning down people at schools. We just don't need more publicity for the mega superstar who couldn't control his temper and took it out physically on his girlfriend.
Bad example.
And what to do about Michael Phelps? He's still on the KCA ballot for favorite druggie, ahem, athlete!
If you didn't get enough of this mess here, read another article I wrote about Chris Brown and Rihanna on The Wrap.com, “Young Hollywood, Ruderless Again.”
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