Its been four days now since the Baltimore Ravens terminated Ray Rice's contract on account of domestic violence charges and the news is still talking about it. Did the NFL go too easy on Rice following the incriminating video's leak? Is the league too lax on criminal offenders? These were the big questions leading up to Rice's dismissal. Now, CBS had another question to answer, is it appropriate to show Rihanna (who was famously beaten by Chris Brown in 2009) performing at a Raven's game so soon after the news broke? As it turns out, the answer was no.
According to Sports Illustrated, Rihanna's performance of "Run This Town" was cut from CBS's Thursday Night Football broadcast. CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus says, "We thought journalistically and from a tone standpoint, we needed to have the appropriate tone coverage."
The musical opening was replaced by a discussion of Roger Goodell's recent comments about the Ray Rice incident.
[UPDATE: Rihanna Responds]
After CBS pulled Rihanna's pre-taped performance of "Run This Town" from their Thursday Night Football show last week, they plan on letting viewers see it this week. This didn't sit well with Rih Rih, who blasted them on Twitter for it.
Rihanna literally said "Fuck you" to them for doing this in a tweet which read, "CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday? NO, Fuck you! Y'all are sad for penalizing me for this."
She then added, "The audacity..."
Are you with Rihanna on this one?