"She's so beautiful and nice," says an unnamed "industry insider." "How do you hit her?" You know, because sending an ugly, mean woman to the hospital is totally excusable.

How the hell do you go from the insiders comment to its ok to hit ugly mean women to the hospital? The insider was clearly surprised by the incident and was only stating that Rihanna is not the type of person in their experience that they would expect to be in this type of situation. You would know this if you did not quote farm them.

Both of them are young and prone to jealousy," a "pal" of the pair chimes in, suggesting that the entire situation can be chalked up to youthful indiscretion or raging hormones.

The pal did no such thing. The pal seemed to be asked what lead to this and s/he gave the reason that this happened. IE from the story you pulled this quote from, that Chris Brown thought Rihanna might be cheating on him. We don't know what the pal thought about the alleged abuse because the article does not tell us.

Here's the sentence that originally raised my hackles: "Rihanna is recovering from her wounds, whatever they are, while Chris Brown must deal with the fallout from a percolating scandal." I sensed a note of condescension in Friedman's "whatever they are" aside

First the dude seems to be the gossip columnist for the site not known for its celebrity gossip so its not like he is the leading voice in the world. Second, that is your politics sensing. Dude, might not have known the extent of the injuries when he wrote the piece, that is why he said whatever they are.

and there seemed to be an undertone of annoyance at the "percolating scandal" Brown "must deal with." It occurred to me that I was, perhaps, being oversensitive.

Is this not a scandal? And is not developing? And are not most hollywood stories like this described in terms like this? If you answer no to any of these pull the tape from the first week of this year from Extra, EW or TMZ. This is just the standard gossip style of writing stories like this.

But then I read on. "It’s so far unclear if Rihanna will be willing forgive and forget," writes Friedman. Right. Because the onus should be on the alleged victim of domestic violence to make all the bad press and legal trouble go away

He used that term after describing the legal consequences for Brown. He is saying that the only way for Brown to plea before his hearing is for Rihanna to be on board. So yes in this case it is on the victim to make the legal trouble go away as Brown is the alleged criminal in this case and he can't magically say go away.

If you wanted to write about this incident just write about it. Talk about how good it is that Rihanna is cooperating with the police and DA and how she is a role model for doing this and more women should do this (I can't expect a miracle for all the men that are victims of DV). There is just no need to make up a story.