Compare and Contrast Time.

Hello I will be your compare for the evening. Over there is my faithful assistant Contrast who is on hand to point out what a truly terrible pun this has been.

Last night the video to support the Shakira single "Can't Remember to Forget You" featuring Rihanna was released and can be viewed here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3mP3mJDL2k

Obviously featuring both Rihanna and Shakira this is something of a sexy video although I personally think it leans towards satire. Both Rihanna and Shakira are cast as sort of 1920/30's movie starlets constantly trying to outdo each other in the sexy stakes for screen time. In case you failed to pick up on this theme of competition between the two contrasting stars most of the action involves Rihanna and Shakira writhing about on a mattress with contrasting black and white stripes. When Shakira sings her part Rihanna turns her back on her and vice versa.

Although Rihanna puts up a spirited fight Shakira is clearly portrayed as the winner. For example Shakira displays the more dominant body language always appearing higher up on the bed and in the shot that was used in the publicity photo Shakira is sitting upright while Rihanna is resting her head in Shakira's lap in much the same way that a parent would comfort a child or a dog would lie with its master. This point is rammed home towards the end of the video when Shakira is seen playing various musical instruments because she can while Rihanna is absent. Also the collaboration marks a rare moment in Rihanna's career because for once the video was ready before the song was released. Rihanna tends to favour the more chaotic approach of not even attempting to shoot a video until long after most people have got sick of the song.

One area where Shakira is clearly superior to Rihanna is through her charity work. Shakira set up and runs the widely respected Barefoot Foundation while Rihanna's charity exploits are significantly less productive. In order to highlight this contrast in the days running up to the release of the video Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) sent Rihanna on a mini-publicity junket for her VivaGlam charity project. This saw Rihanna appear on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday (29/1/14) morning where she was supposed to repeatedly use variants of the phrase; "In my native Barbados" in order to personify the immigration reform element of President Obama's State of the Union address of the previous night. On Wednesday evening Rihanna appeared on the Entertainment (E) Channel and recorded some bits for Canadian television which will be broadcast as and when.

I should point out that back in late 2012 when it became obvious that Rihanna was going to be forced into lots of charity work I thought the management would push her into fairly average projects that were just slightly under-performing. That way I would be on hand to point out what could be improved about Rihanna's projects. That would promote a lot of technical discussion within the charity/international development sector and those who agreed with me over the flaws in Rihanna's projects would be identified as trouble makers and squeezed out. As it turns out the VivaGlam project is actually so ridiculously poor that it falls so far below the minimum accepted standard within the sector that it can't even be used as a valid case study.

VivaGlam is set up to tackle HIV/AIDS. As the name suggests Human Immunodeficiency Virus is indeed a virus. That means that the only way that it is going to be be effectively defeated is through expensive and complex laboratory based research to understand how the virus functions and how best to destroy it. In the meantime people need methods to avoid contact with the virus (condoms, rubber gloves, sterilisation etc) and drug therapies to slow down the virus and treat the symptoms it creates. This all seems far too complicated for VivaGlam so instead they are concentrating all their efforts on talking about HIV/AIDS. These type of talking therapy are, at best, hit and miss within the field of psychotherapy. In the field of virology they are totally and completely useless. So whenever Rihanna talks about her work with VivaGlam it's impossible for her not to look stupid.

Going back to the video itself I suspect the management hoped that it would focus more heavily on Rihanna and Shakira's faux-lesbianism. For example I suspect there is a lot of footage of Rihanna and Shakira writhing in bed that didn't make the final cut. The hope was this would help the US cosy up to the Russians ahead of the winter Olympics by re-enforcing the notion that there's no such thing as lesbians - they're either doing it for attention or because they're mentally/emotionally damaged in some way. Unfortunately that actually only serves to highlight how badly the management have mis-read the Russian gay rights argument. While I hate to generalise Russia is a very homophobic country. That means that there are gangs who will kidnap and murder people simply for being gay and public pressure has forced many local governates to pass strict anti-gay laws.

With the winter Olympics and the worlds attention coming to Sochi which has to be the most gay-friendly city in Russia the Russian government decided to make a big thing about this by passing national anti-gay laws in order for those laws to be positively challenged. Unfortunately the world's gay community - especially in the UK - choked at this opportunity and instead decided to use it to highlight how reactionary, hysterical and downright mentally unbalanced they can be. Therefore my advice to any gay athletes travelling to Sochi would be to take the Jesse Owens approaching of showing that they're just like all the other athletes only a little bit better.

(Originally Posted) 15:15 on 31/1/14 (UK date).