For my pal, Mr. H- the bottom line: "Not Guilty" is not the same as "Innocent"
Somehow, there seems to be a secular rule that states that if an individual exhibits 'greatness' on an area, well.....then any abhorrent behavior must be overlooked, or forgiven.
So it has been with R.Kelly.....until now.
1. "Sometimes great art is made by despicable people. Does that matter? Should it?
2. .... why is he nowhere to be found in this year's Pazz & Jop [music critics] poll results?
Is this the year people stopped ignoring R. Kelly's many crimes? Why, after my 15 years of reporting on those many crimes, have people started to take notice?
3. During my tenure as pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, I covered Kelly's ... to becoming one of the dominant voices in r&b, selling more than 54 million albums in a three-decade career... R. Kelly used his position of fame and influence as a pop superstar to meet girls as young as 15 and have sex with them, according to court records and interviews,"...
a. ... more stories followed, none more dramatic or troubling than the report published in February 2002 revealing the existence of a 26-minute, 39-second ... Shot in the basement "playroom" of a house that Kelly owned in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, the video depicts a man resembling Kelly and a girl the Sun-Times identified (but never named) as having been 14 or 15 at the time.
She is ordered to call the man "daddy"; she follows his directions to strike various poses and to open wide as he urinates in her mouth, and she's ordered to assume different positions as the two have sex. Four months later, the video resulted in the singer being indicted by the state of Illinois on 21 counts of making child pornography.... never was charged with statutory rape, despite dozens of civil lawsuits and out-of-court settlements with underage girls who claim they had sexual relationships with him that left them physically and emotionally damaged.
b. ... acquitted of those charges in June 2008, but as any criminal attorney will tell you, "not guilty" doesn't mean "innocent."
In recent weeks I've heard from many people who remain haunted by the verdict. "I devoted a lot of time to make sure this pedophile was convicted of this horrible crime," one investigator wrote. "Justice did not prevail."
4. Added a woman who worked at Kelly's label, Jive Records: 'At the time it seemed disgusting, but it was the music business, an industry built on the foundation of white male sexual fantasy, so a lot of bad behavior was not only condoned, but enabled and encouraged... Thus does rape culture proliferate.'
5. ... I've never expected other journalists and critics to feel as strongly about this story as I do. But neither did I expect the cultural amnesia that for years allowed many to ignore any reference to Kelly's crimes, despite the mountains of evidence in the public record, or to dismiss them with a fleeting nod to past "controversy" or "rumors."
6. .... a series for Chicago Public Radio that ran the week before Kelly's celebratory closing set at Pitchfork, and here's where the bigger, lingering questions arise for our clubby world of music criticism. The owners of Pitchfork, the website and the festival, cannot claim ignorance: Like many of Kelly's boosters in the music industry, they were well aware of his crimes. Yet they gave him the ultimate slot on a stage within walking distance of the homes of many of his victims, whom they, like other Kelly fans, never once considered.
7. .... Pitchfork isn't the first corporation in the entertainment business to abet such behavior. .... But few among us would accept that music is mere entertainment, that it doesn't mean anything in the "real world," and that our endorsements or condemnations are therefore meaningless as well.
8. Are we obliged to consider an artist's crimes while consuming his art?
9. .... Kelly is a singular case, because of the volumes of evidence I've seen, and because that cannot help but inform the way I hear what Jezebel infamously (sarcastically or not) called his "magnificent ode to p*ssy." But if he's forever talking about sex in his art, in addition to telling "haters" to shut up and asking his Heavenly Father to forgive his unnamed sins, I think that obliges us to talk about what we hear him saying,...
10. Why? Because art matters. Because criticism and context matter. Because crimes against women and children matter. And because the conversation matters. It's about time we had it."
Why Are People Finally Paying Attention to R. Kelly's Many Crimes?
Possibly, the evil, the depth of said behavior, is beginning to sink in.
But....why only in this case?
One cannot help but see the same conversation needs be had centering on how a rapist is the most popular elected Democrat in the nation.
The tale is a mirror image: the central speech at the Democrat Convention...."the ultimate slot on a stage"....
Is politics "mere entertainment, that it doesn't mean anything in the "real world,"....?
Perhaps it is time for the same conversation in other areas.
Somehow, there seems to be a secular rule that states that if an individual exhibits 'greatness' on an area, well.....then any abhorrent behavior must be overlooked, or forgiven.
So it has been with R.Kelly.....until now.
1. "Sometimes great art is made by despicable people. Does that matter? Should it?
2. .... why is he nowhere to be found in this year's Pazz & Jop [music critics] poll results?
Is this the year people stopped ignoring R. Kelly's many crimes? Why, after my 15 years of reporting on those many crimes, have people started to take notice?
3. During my tenure as pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, I covered Kelly's ... to becoming one of the dominant voices in r&b, selling more than 54 million albums in a three-decade career... R. Kelly used his position of fame and influence as a pop superstar to meet girls as young as 15 and have sex with them, according to court records and interviews,"...
a. ... more stories followed, none more dramatic or troubling than the report published in February 2002 revealing the existence of a 26-minute, 39-second ... Shot in the basement "playroom" of a house that Kelly owned in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, the video depicts a man resembling Kelly and a girl the Sun-Times identified (but never named) as having been 14 or 15 at the time.
She is ordered to call the man "daddy"; she follows his directions to strike various poses and to open wide as he urinates in her mouth, and she's ordered to assume different positions as the two have sex. Four months later, the video resulted in the singer being indicted by the state of Illinois on 21 counts of making child pornography.... never was charged with statutory rape, despite dozens of civil lawsuits and out-of-court settlements with underage girls who claim they had sexual relationships with him that left them physically and emotionally damaged.
b. ... acquitted of those charges in June 2008, but as any criminal attorney will tell you, "not guilty" doesn't mean "innocent."
In recent weeks I've heard from many people who remain haunted by the verdict. "I devoted a lot of time to make sure this pedophile was convicted of this horrible crime," one investigator wrote. "Justice did not prevail."
4. Added a woman who worked at Kelly's label, Jive Records: 'At the time it seemed disgusting, but it was the music business, an industry built on the foundation of white male sexual fantasy, so a lot of bad behavior was not only condoned, but enabled and encouraged... Thus does rape culture proliferate.'
5. ... I've never expected other journalists and critics to feel as strongly about this story as I do. But neither did I expect the cultural amnesia that for years allowed many to ignore any reference to Kelly's crimes, despite the mountains of evidence in the public record, or to dismiss them with a fleeting nod to past "controversy" or "rumors."
6. .... a series for Chicago Public Radio that ran the week before Kelly's celebratory closing set at Pitchfork, and here's where the bigger, lingering questions arise for our clubby world of music criticism. The owners of Pitchfork, the website and the festival, cannot claim ignorance: Like many of Kelly's boosters in the music industry, they were well aware of his crimes. Yet they gave him the ultimate slot on a stage within walking distance of the homes of many of his victims, whom they, like other Kelly fans, never once considered.
7. .... Pitchfork isn't the first corporation in the entertainment business to abet such behavior. .... But few among us would accept that music is mere entertainment, that it doesn't mean anything in the "real world," and that our endorsements or condemnations are therefore meaningless as well.
8. Are we obliged to consider an artist's crimes while consuming his art?
9. .... Kelly is a singular case, because of the volumes of evidence I've seen, and because that cannot help but inform the way I hear what Jezebel infamously (sarcastically or not) called his "magnificent ode to p*ssy." But if he's forever talking about sex in his art, in addition to telling "haters" to shut up and asking his Heavenly Father to forgive his unnamed sins, I think that obliges us to talk about what we hear him saying,...
10. Why? Because art matters. Because criticism and context matter. Because crimes against women and children matter. And because the conversation matters. It's about time we had it."
Why Are People Finally Paying Attention to R. Kelly's Many Crimes?
Possibly, the evil, the depth of said behavior, is beginning to sink in.
But....why only in this case?
One cannot help but see the same conversation needs be had centering on how a rapist is the most popular elected Democrat in the nation.
The tale is a mirror image: the central speech at the Democrat Convention...."the ultimate slot on a stage"....
Is politics "mere entertainment, that it doesn't mean anything in the "real world,"....?
Perhaps it is time for the same conversation in other areas.
