mea culpa (17 posts)

Despite all that's happened, Rihanna doesn't hate Chris Brown.

In fact, she still loves him.

"I don't hate him at all," she tells Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. "I actually love and care about him and I'm concerned about him doing well. I want him to do well, have a great career, have a great life and grow up, and just take this as something that you had to go through to grow up and learn."

She may wish him the best, but neither this morning nor yesterday morning did she mention the words forgiveness, reconciliation or rekindle, although those are topics supposedly set to be tackled on tonight's 20/20 special.

The singer did, however, explain some of what happened in the car that fateful February night.

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AP Photo/Tim Aylen

UPDATE: Forbes will not face a contempt charge for opening his mouth without knowing what he was talking about.

"It is my opinion that you have suffered enough," Senior Justice Anita Allen said in court.
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When it comes to apologies, it's better late than never. When it comes to shooting off your mouth and marring the verdict of a closely watched international trial, never would have been a lot better than any time at all.

Picewell Forbes, the Bahamian MP whose loose lips resulted in a mistrial in John Travolta and Kelly Preston's $25 million extortion case, has finally offered his apologies for his televised and logic-defying declaration that the alleged extortionists had been cleared…before a verdict had actually been rendered.

"My statements were reckless and interfered with the course of justice in that case and were further capable of bringing disrepute to the whole administration of justice," Forbes told reporters during a brief press conference this morning.

Forbes took no questions, as the matter of his gaffe is still pending. His lawyer has maintained that the politico was simply repeating a rumor, though has not yet disclosed the source. A local radio personality as well as a member of parliament, Bahamian papers are speculating that Forbes could invoke journalistic privilege in not explaining how he came into the knowledge of the supposed verdict, though that argument would likely not stand.

He's due to appear in Nassau court on Thursday, when he could face a contempt charge. A retrial is slated to begin early next year.

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Check which other stars had their day in court recently with a flip through our Court Appearances gallery.

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At least Kanye West didn't make up some nonsense about milking cats.

But the rapper still feels very Greg Focker-esque about putting a damper on Taylor Swift's big night at the MTV Video Music Awards and turning a slew of people against him in the process.

"I feel like Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents when he messed up everything and Robert De Niro asked him to leave," West wrote Monday on his blog. "That was Taylor's big moment and I had no right in any way to take it from her. I am truly sorry."

Sorry is right.

West continued his streak of odd VMA behavior Sunday, hopping onstage when Swift won for Best Female Video for "You Belong With Me" to congratulate her—with one minor caveat.

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Peter "Hopper" Stone/CNN

Chris Brown was—and still is—in love with Rihanna, he says. But though they had "a pretty sturdy and great relationship," he apparently wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with the rough patches.

"I'm not saying domestic violence is a part of relationships," he said when asked by Larry King last week why he thinks he got violent with his then-girlfriend back in February.

"We're both young, nobody taught us how to love one another. No one taught us a book on how to control our emotions, our anger."

"I'm not trying to fall on the fact that I'm young," the 20-year-old singer added, his soft tone and blue bowtie only serving to emphasize his boyishness. "There's a lot of stuff I wish I could have changed that night."

But seeing as how that's impossible, all he can do is hope for a bunch of better tomorrows.

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Johnny Nunez/Getty Images

When things like this happen, we wonder: Where are the parents?

Chris Brown's mother, for one, has been right by his side.

Joyce Hawkins, whose 20-year-old son has just been sentenced to probation and community labor for beating up his girlfriend, has posted a statement on one of Brown's fan sites in which she thanks her boy's fans for their undying support and pleads with her fellow parents to stick by their kids through thick and thin.

"I just want to say from the bottom of my heart thank you for your continued support. I'm sorry I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone as this case was ongoing," Hawkins wrote on TheChrisBrownFanClub.com.

"I can now say this has been the most painful moment in my entire life, but knowing that you were still standing by Chris' side in his time of need made this a little easier for us."

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CBS

Looks who's having second thoughts. (Or coherent thoughts, in general.)

A day after a national TV audience watched Chima Simone get unceremoniously booted from Big Brother 11 for her unruly behavior, the 33-year-old fussbucket is feeling a wee bit of remorse.

Not for the way she treated her fellow houseguests or the show's producers, mind you. But apparently she would rather not be the scourge of an entire ethnic community.

"I am particularly sorry that my words disparaged the regard and respect that should be shown to all cultures, especially the Middle Eastern community in this time of great turmoil within our nations," Simone wrote in an email to Hollyscoop.com, referring to her on-camera clash with housemate Russell Kairouz, in which she called the Lebanese-American mixed martial-arts fighter a "terrorist" and accused him of "terrorizing everybody in the house."

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AP Photo/Chris Miller; NBC

Deliberately misinterpreted or not, unnecessarily drawn out or not, in poor taste or…well, the consensus is actually pretty clear on that one…Sarah Palin has finally called a cease-fire on her feud with David Letterman, accepting for good the host's second, and slightly more sincere, televised extension of an olive branch.

The détente was made official this morning, when the Alaska governor issued a statement thanking Letterman, more or less, for coming to his comedic senses, and accepting his apology on behalf of the double-X-chromosome set.

"Of course it's accepted on behalf of young women, like my daughters, who hope men who 'joke' about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve," Palin said of the Late Show host's apology.

"Letterman certainly has the right to 'joke' about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction."

And lest anyone forget Palin is still a star political figure and not (solely) an instigator of culture wars, she somehow even managed to work in a shout-out to the nation's servicemen and -women.

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CBS

David Letterman has figured out that, at this point, the joke's on him.

At Monday's taping, the Late Show host again apologized—but without reattacking them this time—to Sarah Palin's family for his "coarse joke" about the Alaska governor's 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, getting "knocked up" by New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez. Palin—along with many of her supporters and Letterman's harshest critics—interpreted it as a bizarro crack at 14-year-old Willow Palin.

"I've never made jokes like this as long as we've been on the air, 30 long years, and you can't really be doing jokes like that," Letterman said, referring to the inappropriate thing some thought that he was saying. "And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself."

"It doesn't make any difference what my intent was, it's the perception," the late-night veteran told his audience. "And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it's not a very good joke...I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception.

"And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault."

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Apparently Kiefer Sutherland's role as Jack Bauer went a little too far to his head—and unfortunately the guy who got in his way.

The 24 star turned up on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night to plug the DVD release of his Fox series' seventh season and offered a mea culpa for the now infamous incident earlier this month when he was busted for allegedly head-butting designer Jack McCollough at a Met Costume Institute Gala afterparty.

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About that whole "make a sex tape" thing...

Jamie Foxx, knowing he was fighting a losing battle in the court of public opinion, apologized on camera to Miley Cyrus tonight for some random off-color remarks he made about the teen queen on his satellite radio show over the weekend.

"Did you say something inappropriate?" Jay Leno innocently queried of the Oscar winner on Tuesday's Tonight Show.

"Yeah," Foxx admitted, taking a few breaths—and making some potentially prophetic mentions of this being fodder for his very own E! True Hollywood Story—before launching into a full-blown apology.

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Charles Barkley's run-in with the law has landed him in foul territory.

The outspoken NBA analyst was sentenced to 10 days in jail Monday after pleading guilty to driving under the influence for his Dec. 31 arrest in Scottsdale, Ariz.

He'll only have to spend five days behind bars, however, if he completes an alcohol-education program. A $2,000 fine was also levied on him for the incident. He's due to start serving his sentence by March 21.

Barkley was arrested at about 1:30 a.m. after running a stop sign. He refused to take a breath test at the scene, but was apparently more than happy to inform his arresting officers that he'd been in such a hurry because he was on his way to get oral sex.

After a two-month, network-imposed hiatus, the brash former baller was back at his post on TNT's Inside the NBA Thursday, where he apologized—bluntly, as always—for his behavior.

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INFphoto.com

Fame means always having to say you're sorry.

Miley Cyrus, apparently figuring it was time to sweep her latest photo scandal (more of a scandalette, really) under the rug, officially apologized Monday for any hurt feelings that resulted from the photo she took with her friends in which nearly everyone is slanting their eyes.

"I want to thank all of my fans for their support not only this week, but always! I really wanted to stress how sorry I am if the photo of me with my friends offended anyone," writes Cyrus, fresh from a well-received Grammy-night duet with Taylor Swift, on her MileyWorld blog.

"I have learned a valuable lesson from this and know that sometime my actions can be unintentionally hurtful. I know everything is a part of GODs [sic] ultimate plan, and mistakes happen so that eventually I will become the woman he aspires me to be. Peace and love, Miles."

So that should be it, right?

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