Operation Misery: Month 13, Week 4, Day 4.

In my last post on the subject I mentioned that Friday (28/3/14) provided us with an opportunity to discover if the US had learnt it's lesson from the failures of 2013. With Drake's tour coming to an end they could either set Rihanna free to undertake the repair work that her career and life generally so desperately needs. Alternatively they could continue to press ahead with a plan that has failed at every stage up until now and seems doomed to continue as a failure.

On Friday afternoon/evening we were presented with the US' decision. To people with experience of the operation it should come as no surprise that the US decided to continue with Drake leaving London, UK for Toronto, Canada and Rihanna also leaving London a few hours later for Los Angeles, US. There of course remains a question as to whether the UK should have acted to save the US from itself by refusing to allow Rihanna to leave.

In the immediate term the fact that Rihanna and Drake are now in two separate countries on opposite sides of the north American continent is a good thing. That's because freed from Drake and his associates Rihanna now has the opportunity to reflect on the damage she has done to herself through her actions over this past week. The earthquake that struck Los Angeles shortly after Rihanna's arrival provides a rather apt metaphor for this. After all the main complaint about that 'quake is that it was too shallow and lacked any real depth.

In the longer term though the decision to temporarily separate Drake and Rihanna is actually likely to do more damage. That is because it is quite clear that the US intend to keep the "Will they, won't they?" suspense going all through the summer and at least until Drake returns to the UK for an appearance at the "Wireless" festival in early July at roughly the same time as the G7 Summit. During this time the situation in Ukraine means that diplomatic relations between the US and most to the rest of the world are likely to be extremely tense. If Rihanna insists on putting herself in the centre of that I find it hard to imagine that anybody would want anything to do with her even if no decision is made to actively punish her.

As such I think the only course of action open to Rihanna now is to rapidly put out a statement making clear that the 'relationship' with Drake was entirely fake, she will have nothing more to do with it or him and apologising in the strongest possible terms. After all the federal government clearly cannot be relied on to refuse Drake entry to the US on the grounds that his presence there is contrary to the public good.


(Originally posted) 15:10 on 29/3/14 (UK date).