"Mr. Kelly once stood atop the realm of R&B music, catapulting himself into an international sensation in the 1990s and 2000s on the success of hits like 'I Believe I Can Fly.'"

"But as the Me Too movement continued to gain steam, cracks in his armor began to show.... The image he once crafted as an alluring sex symbol and genre-redefining lyricist collapsed in the public eye.... [A]s he gained immense access to young fans, Mr. Kelly became a criminal mastermind who used a universe of enablers and sycophants in his orbit to ensnare women, girls and boys.... [Kelly's] lawyers aimed to cast his accusers as opportunists, liars and obsessive fans, arguing their sex with the singer had been consensual, and their accounts of abuse and misconduct fabricated.... [A] cascade of witnesses described a repressive system of restrictions that the women and girls around Mr. Kelly were forced to abide by — from a directive to address him as 'Daddy' to requirements to obtain his permission to eat or use the bathroom. They said that when the rules were broken, the singer doled out harsh and startling punishments, from skin-tearing spankings to forcing one woman to smear feces on her face and eat it."

From "R. Kelly is convicted on all counts after decades of accusations of abuse" (NYT).

Why did people ever fall for the delusional self-empowerment of "If I can see it, then I can do it/If I just believe it, there's nothing to it/I believe I can fly/I believe I can touch the sky"?

Believe in yourself, and you can do it. People ate that up, and — as they say in the NYT — he gained immense access to young fans.

Was he "a criminal mastermind"? What does it take to qualify for that title? I didn't follow the trial. I'm just trying to read a NYT article about it.

ADDED: He can replace "I Believe I Can Fly" with "If I Had Wings Like an Angel" (AKA "Prisoner's Song"). Chose a version or listen to the 1925 original:

If I had wings like an angel/Over these prison walls I would fly/And I'd fly to the arms of my poor darlin'/And there I'd be willing to die....

"But if you support the Catholic Church, isn’t that like the same thing as being an R. Kelly fan? I don’t really see the difference, except for one’s music is significantly better."

That's a joke, told by Pete Davidson on "SNL," quoted in "Pete Davidson made a joke on SNL about the Catholic Church. Now officials are demanding an apology" (WaPo).

Definitely not amused was the Catholic Church’s Diocese of Brooklyn, which on Monday released a lengthy statement condemning the joke and seeking an “immediate public apology” from the sketch comedy show and from NBC, the network that airs it. “The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions,” the statement reads, in part. “The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.”

Here's the lengthy statement from the Diocese of Brooklyn. Excerpt:

Apparently, the only acceptable bias these days is against the Catholic Church. 

Oh! You're the victim.

The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions. The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.

It's the Era of That's Not Funny, but has the Catholic Church ever had a sense of humor? It's a "difficult time" for the Catholic Church because the Church actively closed off our view of the problem. If you'd been open about it all these years, would our jokes about you have had a "purpose"? What is the general principle that the Diocese of Brooklyn is trying to state? It seems to be: It's wrong to react with jokes when we get news about X because the news is already hurting X — X is the victim and we, the jokesters, are the bullies. That's rich!

The clergy sex abuse crisis is shameful, and no one should ever get a laugh at the expense of the victims who have suffered irreparably....

And by "victims," you mean the Church? Because that's the only target of the joke. What's the general rule here? If X victimizes Y, it's wrong to joke about X, because it makes light of the entire situation and that hurts Y. Maybe, but if it's X who invokes the rule, can we at least laugh about that?

It is likely that no other institution has done more than the Catholic Church to combat and prevent sexual abuse. 

Oh, now you're making your own joke? Or... the only way I can understand this is as a confession of the vast, horrific scale of the abuse. It's not that you've done so much in proportion to the problem, but that you've got such a huge problem.

The insensitivity of the writers, producers, and the cast of SNL around this painful subject is alarming.

Ridiculous. The reason SNL's joke hurt so much is that it directly provokes your adherents to get the hell out. I'm sure that is alarming.

"SNL" cold open: Gayle King interviews R. Kelly.

Lady Gaga self-censors her rape-y video.

"Riffing on Gaga’s hip surgery last year, the video opens with her on an operating table being felt up by [R.] Kelly, who then sedates her and messes around with her unconscious body with help from a team of scantily clad nurses."

Why film it in the first place? It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, last October, but then, in December, an article came out in the Village Voice, collecting the new stories into one spot thus displaying a vivid portrait of Kelly's history as a sexual predator.

We're told that "Gaga distanced herself from Kelly immediately following the Village Voice piece, and has kept away in the months since." It's not as though those stories weren't already out there, and Gaga chose to make this video giving up her naked body — consciously — for the acting out of a sexual assault on a naked unconscious female character. (Clip viewable here.)

She knew exactly what she was doing, and all that had changed— to which she reacted "immediately" — was a conspicuous Village Voice article. The video was intended to stimulate a certain amount of outrage. It's the old game of succès de scandale, and her move was calibrated on the presumption of the public's vague memories of many old stories about Kelly. The Village Voice threw the calculation off.

Apparently, there's not no such thing as bad publicity

Why did Lady Gaga make but then pull the video?
	Something other than that Village Voice article.
	The VV article roused her conscience and made her see the video was wrong.
	The VV article changed the way some viewers would see the video and she chose to protect them.
	The Village Voice article changed the prediction about what the PR would be like.
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