It shouldn't be news when America's reigning pop diva, Beyoncé, spends New Year's in St. Barts with her husband Jay-Z. And usually, aside from the requisite long-range paparazzi shots of her in a bikini or sunning on a yacht, it isn't.
This year, however, Bey made headlines and outraged some by performing at the party of Moutassim "Hannibal" Gaddafi for a reported $2 million. Gaddafi is the son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, whose country was listed as a state sponsor of terror in the 1980s, was subject to a U.S. travel ban from 1986-2004 and was without an American embassy from 1980-2008.
I know in places like Monaco and St. Barts there are more dispossessed royal heirs than you can shake a stick at, who were long ago stripped of any political power but held onto their titles, estates, and ridiculous fortunes. But Gaddafi's father has real power, and he used it to finance bombings that killed 190 American citizens in one instance alone. Some would say that this is old news: Libya and the U.S. have diplomatic relations now, and anyway, we shouldn't revisit the sins of the father on the son.
But Hannibal himself has a history of violence: According to the New York Post, he and his wife were charged in 2008 for beating their servants in a hotel in Geneva, he was arrested in 2005 for punching his wife and trashing their Paris hotel while brandishing a gun, and just last week authorities in London were called when he attacked his wife (again) on Christmas, putting her in the hospital. Not exactly a peach.
I expect better judgment from Beyoncé. If she absolutely has to hang out with rich thugs, do it privately (like Lindsay Lohan, Russell Simmons, and Victoria Silvstedt, who were all at the party as well). Don't take their blood money. Forbes ranked Beyoncé as fourth on its list of 100 Most Powerful and Influential Celebrities, and she reportedly raked in $87 million between 2008-2009. Great power comes with great responsibility, and while it would take more than one questionable incident to knock her off her pedestal as one of America's sweethearts, Queen B should be more careful who she hangs out with.
