Then, for a moment, it seemed the two might have moved on. In December 2010, Brown proudly boasted how he’d completed his anger management classes, and two months later, Rihanna eased the terms of her restraining order against him. But human stories are far more complicated and tangled than any paperwork can reveal. By last March, Brown was pitching temper tantrums on the set of “Good Morning America,” and just this month he was aggressively gloating of his Grammy win by tweeting “HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY Now!” Perhaps that anger thing isn’t quite all better yet.

Rihanna’s obvious fascination with the imagery of violence, meanwhile, has been dissected endlessly over the past few years. From her “extreme” photo shoot for Italian Vogue to her bold vocals on Eminem’s domestic abuse anthem “Love the Way You Lie” to her murder fantasy video for “Man Down,” she’s teasingly played both victim and avenger, toying with empowerment expectations as she straddles tanks.

Most provocative, though, has been the way the two estranged lovers have never seemed quite through with each other. Brown told Larry King back in 2009 that he was still “definitely” in love with her and would spend a lifetime with her, and Rihanna has been cryptically tweeting about love and relationships for months.

Now there’s this most public atrocity. Perez Hilton wrote Monday that the collaboration was “genius” — and if by “genius” he means “gross,” then yes. On Brown’s eminently mediocre “Turn Up the Music,” Rihanna serves mostly to add a few more “turn it ups” to the mix, though her “I love you” at the three-minute mark and again at the end seems poignantly awful. And on “Birthday Cake,” when Rihanna teases, “I know you want to bite this, it’s so enticing,” Brown replies, “Girl I want to f— you right now, been a long time; I been missing your body.”  No wonder the Vimeo clip of “Turn Up the Music” is labeled “YIKES!” Yikes, indeed.

The duo have also been playing out a coy back and forth on Twitter, where Brown recently wished Rihanna a happy birthday by familiarly addressing her by her real first name, Robyn. Rihanna cheerfully announced her guest appearance on the Brown track by declaring herself #teambreezy. Ironically, Rihanna also tweeted Monday the Maya Angelou maxim that when “People show u who they are….believe them!”

That two young people with a volatile dynamic might still be drawn to each other is perhaps understandable. The idea that a person would continue to associate with the man who beat her — either professionally or personally — is a lot more difficult for most of us to fathom. It might appear marginally less self-destructive were Brown himself not continuing to make such a fantastic show of being an arrogant creep, a guy who tweets, “Don’t like it, don’t listen!” And it wouldn’t be so thoroughly nauseating if the whole enterprise didn’t smack of opportunism, a clever way of leveraging domestic violence into two awesome dance tracks. Based on the Vimeo commenters gushing “awww I love them,” it seems to be working.

You know what? Screw that. Most abusers don’t get to win Grammys, and most victims don’t get to top the charts. They don’t get gold records for their fights and their reconciliations. They’re not romantic or sexy, they don’t drop remixes. They just get bruises and restraining orders and emergency-room visits and cops pounding on the door. And though Brown’s and Rihanna’s songs are different, they both sound exactly the same. Cynical. Painful. And unbearably pathetic.

We’ve also seen the surprisingly low-key response to the arrest Sunday of Hugh Hefner’s son Marston on a domestic abuse charge. The younger Hefner is accused of assaulting his girlfriend Claire Sinclair, the 2011 Playmate of the Year. The Los Angeles Times reports that police, responding to a domestic assault call, “determined Sinclair had suffered minor injuries consistent with an assault,” and a photo of a bruised Sinclair on TMZ seems to corroborate.

Sinclair says she doesn’t want to press charges “if [Hefner] keeps his word to give a public apology for physically abusing me on several occasions, and seeks psychiatric help for his anger issues.” (She has, however, sought a temporary restraining order.) And ever since the news broke, the always-classy TMZ commenters have been busy calling Sinclair “a whore [who] deserves everything she got,” “gold-digging trash,” and “a ho ass liar.” Because girls who pose naked in magazines and date the boss’ son shouldn’t be surprised when they wind up bruised, right?

Hef himself, meanwhile, has been expectedly tight-lipped about the altercation. He did tell People this week that “If they care about each other, they’ll patch it up.” Sure, sometimes couples get in fights and they turn physical on both sides. But that’s a hell of a hopeful response to having your son accused of beating his girlfriend – a woman you know and work with, by the way. A word or two about how it’s not OK to hit the ladies, that the Playboy empire does not condone violence, might have been nice to add, as well.

But the biggest winner this Abuse-uary has been Chris Brown. Brown, who pleaded guilty to felony assault in 2009 for the beating of his then-girlfriend Rihanna — and has been known to go berserkers after TV appearances and fire off a homophobic tweet or two for good measure — was off to a rocky start Thursday when a Los Angeles judge denied his request to end his supervised probation early for good behavior. But by Sunday, he was all over the Grammys – performing in not one but two frantic numbers and snagging the prize for best R&B album.

The most demoralizing thing about Brown’s triumph – sadder, even, than his bat-winged backup dancers — was the way in which it set off a grotesque array of supportive, “go ahead and hit me” responses on the Internet. Perhaps inspired by Brown’s track record, Buzzfeed quickly slapped something up: a collection of tweets and Facebook updates from viewers who declared they’d be happy to let Chris Brown beat them to a pulp. A banner night for Brown – a Grammy and a deluge of offers to “punch me in the face.”

You can’t judge a civilization on the dumb comments people leave on Twitter and TMZ. But you can wonder what would happen if we valued each other enough to start from a place where no one “deserves” or invites abuse. As Roxane Gay eloquently explained in the Rumpus, “We fail you every single time a (famous) man treats a woman badly, without legal, professional or personal consequence.” And the failure isn’t just in the relative ease with which the Violence Against Women Act can be brushed aside or a girlfriend beater can win music’s highest honors. The failure is renewed every time we shame and blame women based on how they dress or what they do for a living, or romanticize assault as something to be patched up or playfully pleaded for. The failure is whenever we decide that violence is a legislative inconvenience or a joke. The failure isn’t just at the end of a man’s fist. It’s in the culture that condones him.

Bruce Springsteen

With all his trademark energy intact and backed with a massive string section, the Boss — who lost his longtime collaborator Clarence Clemons last year – kicked off the evening with a rousing version of “We Take Care of Our Own.” It was soulful, spirited and just the right touch of mournful.

LL Cool J

Admitting that “There is no way around this — we had a death in our family,” the night’s host then announced “the only thing right is to begin with a prayer … for our fallen sister.” Depending on your philosophic perspective, watching the audience solemnly bow its collective head while Cool James invoked our “heavenly father” was either a moving tribute or a sudden reminder of why having an atheist like Ricky Gervais host awards shows is a cool idea. But when he cut to clip of Whitney blowing the roof off with a live performance of “I Will Always Love You” at the Grammys a generation ago, it set a bar for vocal performance that would be damn near impossible to match for the rest of the night.

Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt

Honoring the late, great Etta James, two knockout performers of different eras and genres gave a stripped-down version of “Sunday Kind of Love.” It was one of the few pairings of the night that worked, a stunning moment of sincerity and finesse in an evening that often veered heavily to schmaltz.

Chris Brown

It’s not that we can expect the music industry to ignore chart-topping, domestic-abusing, frequently terrible Chris Brown. He’s had a huge year, and on Sunday’s broadcast, he even managed to pick up a Grammy. But aside from his historic awfulness, there’s another reason to ponder whether it was really necessary to subject America to two separate performances. Decked out in his preppy “I’m not dangerous, ladies!” varsity jacket, he jumped around lip-syncing “Turn Up the Music” and “Beautiful People” with a posse of bat-winged, masked performers in a performance apparently inspired by the old video game Q*Bert early in the night, then came back near the end for a dead-behind-the-eyes “tribute to dance.” At least he managed to prove that he doesn’t need his abusive record to be reviled; feel free to shun him just because he sucks.

Jennifer Hudson

It took the powerhouse Jennifer Hudson — who two years ago performed Houston’s most successful smash for the woman herself at the BET Awards — to take “I Will Always Love You” back from the place of power ballad clichés where it’s lived the last two decades and make it ache like new. No big crescendo, no sappy orchestration, just a clearly emotional Hudson belting her heart out. Beautiful.

Foo Fighters

In an intense performance outside the Staples Center for the regular folk, Dave Grohl and company – a gang whose own experience of tragedy was brought home by that audience member thrashing around in a Nirvana shirt — howled through a fiery rendition of their “never wanna die” anthem “Walk.” Later, picking up the Grammy for best rock performance, Grohl admitted, “We made this one in my garage with some microphones and a tape machine,” eloquently pleaded for “the human element of music” and promised, “It’s not about being perfect.” It was a shining example of old-school authenticity, only slightly undercut by the appearance, immediately after, of Ryan Seacrest.

Glen Campbell

Lifetime-achievement award winner Campbell, who last year announced he was facing Alzheimer’s and would release a final album and do one last tour, is not going gently into his disease. After the Band Perry shouted uncomprehendingly through “Gentle On My Mind” and Blake Shelton did a serviceable “Southern Nights,” it was Campbell himself who rocked the house. Looking undeniably unwell but in remarkably stronger voice than the likes of fellow Grammy performers Carrie Underwood or Paul McCartney, he staunchly belted out “Rhinestone Cowboy,” enthusiastically coaxing the entire audience to sing along. It was by the far the greatest exhibition of bad-ass, rock ‘n’ roll indominability of the night.

Katy Perry

Aw, remember when Katy Perry did the Grammys gently swaying in a trapeze swing, showing off home movies from her wedding? Sure you do; it was last year. Post-Russell Brand divorce Katy seems to have decided to go for a different vibe. Performing her new song “Part of Me,” she was all about shattering glass, engulfing ice effigies of men in flames, and declaring, “You can keep the diamond ring, in fact, you can keep everything.” Katy, you blue-haired, pissed-off little minx, you know what? I believe you.

Nicki Minaj

The Catholic Church hasn’t taken this much of a beating since Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” era. In a performance of “Roman Holiday” that topped even Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” Minaj went through a confession gone wrong, an exorcism, and wound up surrounded by dancing monks getting groped by hot leather babes – all while “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” took on a whole new meaning. Did we mention she levitated? It was the closest the Grammys has ever come to turning into a Ken Russell movie.

Adele

Taking the stage after vocal surgery in November, the night’s biggest winner was clearly not in as forceful voice as in her Royal Albert Hall performance of last year. But she was so clearly enjoying her triumphant night of multiple wins, pointing at herself while snarling, “You could have had this all,” she personified bittersweet awesomeness. When the audience thundered to its feet, Adele’s mastery of simultaneous heartbreak and victory was not just in powerful evidence, it was conspicuously infectious. And when, later, she tearfully picked up the final award of the night for album of the year, she copped both to an inspiring “rubbish relationship” and to fending off “oh my God, snot.” And that is whyyyyyyyy we will always love youuuuuuu, Adele.

Brown’s latest project, though, has me completely baffled: According to his rep, Brown will be starring in a romantic comedy adaptation of Steve Harvey’s best-seller, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.” Harvey’s Oprah-certified advice book from 2009 takes women deep into the mind of the male psyche to help us women-folk understand that guys only want three things from them: support, loyalty and sex. (Or as Steve likes to call it, “The cookie.”) The movie version follows a psychiatrist (Kevin Hart) as he attempts to untangle his patients’ messy relationships.

I’m not exactly sure how this film was pitched to Chris … maybe as an attempt for him to reform his image as a lover, not a fighter. But if I were his agent, I’d probably advise him to stay away from anything involving the words “romance” and “comedy,” since his name is still bound to conjure up the opposite sentiments in many people’s minds. As for those who still love Brown and will defend him to their dying breaths, they’ll love him no matter what he does. It seems completely unnecessary for him to branch out into the world of acting in comedies based on self-help books (“He’s Just Not That Into You,” anyone?), since it’s doubtful to change anyone’s opinion of him as a singer or a human being.

Though perhaps he’ll turn in an amazing performance, and we’ll have Chris Brown cameos to look forward to during the next award-season cycle.

Now there is news of Chris using anti-gay slurs during a pickup basketball game. According to a Radar source:

“He got really ticked off when things didn’t go his way during the game, saying, ‘That’s gay!’ and ‘You’re a f*gg*t a**!’ to the other players,” an eyewitness tells Star exclusively.

When another player didn’t pass him the ball, the 22-year-old Forever singer, perhaps best known for beating up Rihanna, fired off more slurs, calling him a “f*gg*t” and saying it was a “gay” move.

Add just one more log to the pyre of Brown’s public image. He’s made homophobic slurs before (in 2010 on Twitter), he hit Rihanna, he has a notoriously bad temper … isn’t this just another checkmark next to his name?

Well, yes and no. Again, this was Brown playing a game of basketball with his friends. He said some ugly words, ones that are unfortunately used in pickup games (and elsewhere!) all over the country. (Not that this excuses it.) The part where Radar was shocked to learn that Chris’ bodyguards stopped people from taking photos or video of the game (even if they were members of the club!) seems to be a little part of the underlying problem here … why wouldn’t a gym ban photographs and video-taking from its rooms?

Not that I’m trying to deflect the blame. Brown has openly sought publicity – on “Good Morning America,” on Twitter, and with his tour — and then proceeded to have very public meltdowns during each. The difference in this situation, and maybe it’s a small one, is that Brown was playing a private basketball game in a gym. No matter if he’s a terrible homophobe or not … if someone was following you around 24/7 and capturing everything you said and did in private, would you be able to claim that you hadn’t made one offensive comment that entire time?

Feel free to judge Chris Brown: He seems like a real dick. But you can probably save the moralizing for another occasion, like when he starts ranting on a public platform again. I’m sure it won’t take too long for that to happen.

UPDATE: Chris Brown’s publicist has released the following statement:

“A totally fictitious article ran in the current Star Magazine (issue date July 25, 2011) accusing our client Chris Brown of doing something that he did not do. The article claimed that on June 29, 2011, Chris participated in a pick up basketball game at 24 Hour Fitness Center in LA and said some very inappropriate statements. The incident described did not occur, nor did the Star ever contact Chris’ representatives to request comment or confirmation. Chris was filming a video with AceHood on June 29 and never left the set. He spent the entire day with dozens of members of the production team filming the video for “Body To Body” at 1870 Sunset Plaza in West Hollywood. The Star accompanied the fabricated story with a photo of Chris playing basketball in New York that was taken on the day of his F.A.M.E. CD release in March. Chris Brown’s management is considering taking appropriate legal action against the paper. Unfortunately this bogus account is being picked up by additional media outlets. We stand behind our client and want to set the record straight that this did not happen.”