Kids' Choice Awards Need Parental Guidance

Chris Brown (or his representatives) finally realized that the proper (or more business-savvy) move was to withdraw his name from the list of nominees for two Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. It spares a potentially very awkward moment on the broadcast since he was probably in contention, having won last year. Nickelodeon had refused to remove him, saying that kids chose him as a nominee months ago. They proclaimed that they didn't want to interfere with the process.

Uh huh. Because you know, the choice of these awards is sacrosanct in our nation. Or not. Because it turns out that the kids only sorta picked the nominees.

The actual process goes something like this: Nickelodeon employs a pollster, which polls kids and comes up with a national sample. (Just how old these kids are, and whether or not they are given suggestions for possible nominees, I was not able to determine. Nickelodeon understandably wouldn't give details to a mere blogger.) Then Nickelodeon decides which are the final four nominees based on the sample.

"The kids who vote will ultimately decide who wins in the category," Nickelodeon has said. But of course, since voting is done at their website, anyone who can log on and click buttons will be able to vote. Thought balloon: interns directed to sit at a computer all day and cast votes for their employers' nominated clients.

This process is dubious enough since Nick can then favor their own shows and stars, but there is another questionable aspect for a network that is geared for ages 6-14 and rarely has an episode of any show that goes above the TV-G rating. In what I can only guess is an attempt to be appear in the vanguard, Nick (a part of MTV's sphere, owned by Viacom) has chosen

I know Chris Brown is big with kids 6-14 as he is one of the few non-raunchy pop/dance artists as is Rhiannon. For the most part anyway.

But that is what is so frustrating for parents (and Nick, shame on you, you should have pulled the plug on this PERIOD) is that two black artists that aren’t in that calibre (not all black artists are, but you do have to monitor things for hip hop and dance) are now a woman beater and a woman who stays with a woman beater. Yay!! That’s a real comfortable conversation to have with my 7, 11, and 13 year old daughters.

But to tell you the truth, it has brought this issue up and it has allowed me to strike pity for Rhiannon for what happened to her and at the same time explain that in no certain terms what happens from here on out is not ALL his fault. Him striking his hand to her is his fault, him striking his hand to her in the future is HIS fault. But she bears no round of sympathy from me.

It reminds me of those episodes of Cops when the cops pull some lowlife off a woman in the street and then the woman jumps on the cop’s back who is handcuffing her man. It makes police less likely to help women who are seriously in danger because they just assume why bother? She is just going to take him back in. My best friend was involved in a relationship like this and the cops pulled him out of the house, put him in jail for 24 hours, felt pity for her and a week later were right back at her house again, same thing. Except this time they didn’t take him to jail, they watched him leave the property and told her to get a TPO. Which we all know how those go.

Eventually she did get one and became strong enough to make him go for good. But in the meantime she endangered herself tremendously. I ended up removing myself from her friendship because he threatened me for ‘meddling’ and I can’t risk that for her “love”. But it killed me inside because I love her.

I’m glad she has found strength in a good husband and I adore him as much as she does. But it was a bad situation.

Lord, I hope this girl gets strong. Knowing her homelife in Barbados with no father, trashy not-there mother, rapper producer guy ‘rescues’ her into the rap world... She has had no guidance and no worth for herself.

So let’s pray Tina gets in there QUICK! I’ll send her 14 copies of “What’s love got to do with it” and she see a strong black woman walk away from a jerk.

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