Between Michael Phelps and Alex Rodriguez, it had already been quite a month for damaged images. But as details of pop singer Chris Brown’s arrest trickle out from various sources, a once bright future looks seriously clouded. Multiple sources now confirm that the woman Brown is accused of assaulting is mega-popular Barbadian singer Rihanna.

The incident occurred Sunday morning, when police were called to a silver Lamborghini parked in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park. Brown had left the scene, but police found Rihanna with visible injuries, including a bloody nose and bite marks on her arm and fingers. Asked who attacked her she identified Brown. Brown turned himself into police Monday morning and, after posting $50,000 bail, retained celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos.

The fallout for Brown has already been severe—and deserved if the charges are true. After backing out of the Grammy Awards, where both he and Rihanna were nominated and scheduled to perform, he then cancelled a scheduled appearance at the upcoming NBA All Star weekend. Additionally, Wrigley’s Gum has suspended advertising featuring Brown.

As for Rihanna, she refused treatment at the scene, but her injuries were photographed by police, and she later received medical care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. No further information has been available from her publicist, other than that the singer is “well.”

U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals at the Beijing Summer Olympics last year, was at the center of a scandal yesterday when a photo of him using his superhuman lungs to suck a bong load appeared in the British tabloid News of the World. The photo was snapped at a party he attended at the University of South Carolina during a four-month break in his swimming schedule. Phelps didn’t bother with a denial. Instead he admitted that, yup, he was smoking out with some friends. Got higher than a kite in fact, and got rather memorably laid that night too, but not before snorting several fat rails of coke off the waxed montes veneris of two eighteen year-old Croatian exchange students.

Mere hours after Phelps’ admission, the U.S. Olympic Committee voiced concern for America's impressionable children in a statement describing Phelps as a role model who was “well aware of the responsibilities and accountability that come with setting a positive example for others, particularly young people.” In a seemingly coordinated move, conservatives in the U.S. Congress introduced a bill that would require American cities to restaff all police and sheriff’s departments with children. Republican Mitt Romney said, “We have conditioned Americans to feel such anxiety for the well-being of children that we believe crime will virtually vanish for fear that an all-child police force might potentially encounter it.”

At Pulp Intl. we’re just happy we can put anything into our bodies we wish. In fact, the only time people here in the third world really panic over children is when they’re late for their sixteen-hour shifts at the Puma sweatshop. On behalf of all those trapped in less-enlightened countries than ours, we sympathize, because this “set a good example for the children” routine has truly reached levels that verge on the comical. Have a few drinks too many and it’s “please, set a good example for the children.” Drive your car through a hedge and into a swimming pool and it’s “please, set a good example for the children.” Shoot someone in the head with a bottle rocket because you want to see if their hair catches fire and it’s “please, set a good example for the children.” It’s gone way, way too far.