Viewpoint: The Best Defense ...

Michael Jackson and his withering career prospects are the notable exception, and while you could argue that the principal difference between Jackson's case and Kelly's is the difference between how our society views the sexuality of 13-year-old boys and of 14-year-old girls, it's really about audacity. The shroud of Neverland has always made Jackson's behavior seem deviant, even if it wasn't illegal. But Kelly goes about his business as if the world were an extension of his satin sheets. He tours, makes videos, writes songs in which he announces, "I want sex in the kitchen, over by the stove/ Put you on the counter, by the buttered rolls," and on his undeniably good Step in the Name of Love (Remix) even proclaims himself "the Pied Piper of R&B." It's possible that Kelly doesn't know the pedophiliac connotations of the reference (in the fable, the piper leads the town's children into a secret mountain cave as revenge for getting stiffed on the exterminator bill), but one surmises he wouldn't stop singing it if he did.

Over the years, music fans have often suspended judgment in return for a few hummable bars, and generally rock stars have had the decency not to push their luck by reminding us of what we're indulging. (Chuck Berry sang Sweet Little Sixteen well before his problems with an underage girl.) R. Kelly is playing a different, more dangerous game. His shamelessness is something to behold, but indulging it comes at a cost: it's called shame.