Chris Brown’s full interview on Larry King Live aired last night and I had the chance to watch the whole thing on the podcast on CNN that’s now available. The guy doesn’t come off much better in the full interview than the shifty kind of mumbling clips we’ve already seen. He does seem a little more human when he talks about witnessing domestic violence at home. He said he would be afraid to go to sleep at night and that his mom’s husband beat her when he was around seven. His mom sits right beside him in the interview and cries during this part while Chris looks kind of detached.

Chris says some of the right things about his attack on Rihanna, but he looks visibly angry at times. Maybe I’m judging him based on what I already know about the guy, but even at the beginning of the interview he looks pissed off to be there, like he shouldn’t have to be apologizing at all. He refuses to go into the details of the incident and can barely explain what set him off that night.

In a moment I’ll include some of E! Online’s recap of the show. (They do a good job and I have to learn to get over my compulsion to transcribe entire interviews.) One thing Brown said that really struck me is that the incident – you know the one where he choked Rihanna, hit her repeatedly, bit her ear and smashed her face into the windshield – was blown out of proportion by the media. I get the impression that he has a lot of resentment that he’s even required to apologize to the public and he thinks we should forget it because he already sort-of said he was sorry.

Larry: Are things calm for you now?…
Chris: I think it’s more relief now that everything is… said and done as far as what I have to do and what’s going on. It’s no more media frenzy for them to kind of blow out of proportion anymore

A little bit later Chris calls the media “immature” and compares it to “high school.” This comes after Larry asked him about the judge admitting that some of the media “chatter” had affected her ruling.

On the “immature” media
Chris: The media as far as the “immature” media, I feel like it’s high school sometimes, how people just pride themselves on personals [sic] business. I feel like they spun a lot of stuff out of control as far as with the judge… everybody reads the newspapers, everybody reads the blogs… it’s easily influenced when there’s something that’s already stated like it happened.

Notice how he never admits what he did, is blaming the media for covering the attack, and is skirting around the brutal beating he inflicted.

Chris’ lawyer says that major newspapers put out false stories about Chris and Rihanna spending time together after the incident. There were pictures of Chris outside Rihanna’s house in the morning in April. How is that a false story?

Larry also asks Chris about the photo that leaked of a beaten Rihanna, and he says that he wasn’t sure if it was altered or not. Chris focuses on how he felt about it, not on how hurt Rihanna must have been, saying “it took a toll on me.”

On the photo of beaten Rihanna: “It took a toll on me”
I first saw it… a week after the incident… I didn’t know what to think at the time, I was like ‘what’? At the time, I just didn’t honestly know what to think. I didn’t know if the picture were [sic] altered, I didn’t know if they were real. I didn’t know, what. I just felt so disappointed like in myself… When I look at it now, it’s just like wow, I can’t believe that that actually happened. It just really like took a toll on me.

We heard these quotes before, but in context they’re even worse. Chris is saying that he didn’t really accept what he did and that dealing with it hurt him. He never says a damn thing about the injuries and physical pain he inflicted on the woman he claims he still loves.

Here’s E!’s recap of the interview. Again, Chris says some of the right things but you can tell that he wants to get out of his community service requirements and that he doesn’t feel a lot of remorse for his actions. He offers a lot of excuses and explanations without seeming to understand the gravity of what he did. His lawyer claims that Chris wanted to take responsibility immediately, but that he advised him not to. I don’t believe that at all, especially given that obnoxious video he recorded and the way that Chris is still blaming the media for his problems.

“I’m not saying domestic violence is a part of relationships,” he said when asked by Larry King last week why he thinks he got violent with his then-girlfriend back in February.

“We’re both young, nobody taught us how to love one another. No one taught us a book on how to control our emotions, our anger.”

“I’m not trying to fall on the fact that I’m young,” the 20-year-old singer added, his soft tone and blue bowtie only serving to emphasize his boyishness. “There’s a lot of stuff I wish I could have changed that night.”

But seeing as how that’s impossible, all he can do is hope for a bunch of better tomorrows.

“I’ve said countless times how sorry I am—to Rihanna,” Brown said last week in an interview that aired tonight on Larry King Live. “It’s a night I wish I could just take back…I feel totally ashamed of what I did”

The repentant R&B star emphasized that he wants to put his best foot forward from now on—something he might be able to do now that he’s established that “of course” he remembers attacking Rihanna in the wee hours of Feb. 8.

“Our relationship was pretty good,” Brown said of their life together leading up to the incident. “We had a pretty sturdy and great relationship.”

However, Brown repeatedly refused to discuss the particulars of that night and why he treated Rihanna the way he did.

“It’s one of those things I wish I could have relived to make it totally different,” he said simply.

At least Brown’s mother, who says she loves Rihanna like a daughter, and his lawyer appear fully confident that the “Run It” purveyor is not the irredeemable abuser some might consider him to be.

“One of the things that’s interesting about Chris is, he wanted to take responsibility immediately,” said defense attorney Mark Geragos. “He did not want to deny this…That’s not usual in my line of work,” he quipped.

“He was forthright, he felt guilty, he felt a great deal of remorse,” Geragos continued, adding that it was only because of his lawyerly advice that Brown didn’t immediately start apologizing in every direction.

“He kept saying, ‘I want to talk to Rihanna, I want to apologize, I want to get help, I don’t want this to happen ever, ever again, and I want to make this up to my mom.'”

When King reminded Brown that he could have done jailtime if he had immediately copped to the beating, the singer replied, “That’s something I would’ve had to accept.”

As for the punishment he did get—five years’ probation, a year of domestic-violence counseling and 180 days of community labor, which will include picking up trash, cleaning up graffiti and other menial tasks—Brown does feel, however, that there possibly are better ways for him to help his community.

“I feel like with what I’m capable of doing as far as influencing people, influencing kids, I could do a lot more to help the community other than picking up trash,” he said, quickly adding, “I’m not saying it’s something wrong…but there’s a lot more that I could do, inside of our community.”

Geragos thinks that counseling will certainly help Brown, whom he’s come to love “like a son or a nephew.”

“I have a high degree of confidence he’s not going to do anything like this in the future,” the attorney said.

“I don’t think, at the end of the day, my career’s over,” Brown concluded. “I just need to prove to people I can be a role model.”

And he’s “pretty sure [he and Rihanna] can always be friends.”

[From E! Online]

So Chris doesn’t think his career is over? Sadly, he could be right, even after this piss poor excuse for an “apology.” The kid is not ready to face this in front of the media, because he doesn’t accept what he’s done.