
Rihanna and Chris Brown at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 7, 2009, hours before court documents say he assaulted her
Readers of The Lede who were puzzled by the large number of comments defending Chris Brown or attacking Rihanna beneath our post on his arrest last month should read the article “Teenage Girls Stand by Their Man,” written by our colleague Jan Hoffman for Thursday’s New York Times.
The fact that many such comments submitted to our site — including dozens that were way, way too profane to publish, many that placed the blame on his Rihanna and several that said some version of “I LOVE YOU CHRIS BROWN!!!!!!” — were written in the style of text messages should probably have tipped us off that Mr. Brown’s staunchest defenders were most likely the young teenage girls who make up his fan base.









