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What the Pope Told James Brown
"I took a trip to Rome during one of my down periods a few years ago, and had the good fortune to be greeted by the pope," says James Brown in his latest memoir (according to this Martha Bayles review). "The pontiff shook my hand three times, and I told him I had been thinking about leaving the music business, and to my surprise, he advised against it. I asked him why.
"He said, 'Because, sir, you can get things done.'"
So what do you suppose John Paul II meant by that? Did he have a list of worthy things that he hoped that James Brown would accomplish? Or was the pope trying but failing to get down, intending to say, "Because, James Brown, you can really take care of business!" Or is that "get things done" stuff what passes for papal small talk? Maybe you once chatted with the pope; did he tell you the same thing?
Maybe JP2 hoped that James Brown would reveal the truth about crunk. Brown speculates in his memoir that rap lyrics heavy with sex are some sort of FCC conspiracy to make Black people look bad, and that some songs may even have their origin in "some faction of the FCC."
|7.29.05 @ 6:09PM|#
Rap lyrics making blacks look bad? Nooooooo...
Of course, I can't throw stones. I'm completely unable to drive
fifty-five.
|7.29.05 @ 6:52PM|#
Did the Pope say this before or after James Brown led the police on an alcohol and drug-fueled highspeed chase while firing a handgun out the window of his car? Because if he said it afterwards, that would make JP2 the coolest freakin' pope ever!
|7.29.05 @ 7:00PM|#
SR,
Did he say it before or after James Brown started beating on
women?
And yeah, I find people who risk the lives of others while driving
under the influence so heroic. Not.
|7.29.05 @ 7:06PM|#
"I find people who risk the lives of others while driving under
the influence so heroic. Not."
A) Being cool and being heroic are not synonyms.
B) I thought it was more than obvious that my post was intended to
be humorous.
|7.29.05 @ 7:22PM|#
SR,
Your cool remark was directed at the Pope. No, it wasn't obviously
humorous.
|7.29.05 @ 7:47PM|#
...are some sort of FCC conspiracy to make Black people look
bad...
Maybe he ought to be looking in the mirror. James Brown is about as
of such of charge as Ike Turner.
|7.29.05 @ 7:52PM|#
The Pope didn't say it was OK to drive drunk and beat women. He said James Brown could get things done as a singer. I know he did some sort of literacy, stay-in-school song at one point (James Brown, not the Pope. I don't think the Pope himself ever cut an album).
|7.29.05 @ 7:57PM|#
the Righttalk ad sucks pretty horribly once again, can't reason find a bleedin sponsor as cool as Nick and Julian and crew think they are?
|7.29.05 @ 9:10PM|#
James Brown, not the Pope. I don't think the Pope himself
ever cut an album).
Comment by: Sluice at July 29, 2005 07:52 PM
Guess again.
http://www.abbapater.com/
|7.29.05 @ 11:16PM|#
I want to know what the puppy pope thinks about this. Hakluyt might not find it humorous, but I'm sure that I will!
|7.30.05 @ 3:45AM|#
the Righttalk ad sucks pretty horribly once again, can't
reason find a bleedin sponsor as cool as Nick and Julian and crew
think they are?
Well, at least they should make the writing big enough so it's
possible to actually read the supposedly funny bit
|7.30.05 @ 7:48AM|#
I seriously doubt the that Soul for Father God ever met and
talked with the Godfather of Soul, anymore than Johnny Carson wrote
material for Al Gore. We live in an age in which bald-faced lying
to sell books comes so easily to public figures that have a camera
or reporter's microphone shoved in their face.
The real sadness is that at one time, before he started beating his
wives, wearing anti-FCC tinfoil hats, and doing Funkadelic-type
fashion modeling for police line-ups, James Brown, in addition to
being an entertainer, was a good role model for entrepreneurship in
the black community. His business moves in the lates 1960s/early
1970s actually inspired a lot of today's rap and R&B moguls of
my generation, as well as black pop artists like Prince and Michael
Jackson.
Furthermore, his songs in that era like "I Don't Want Nobody to
Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I'll Get It Myself)" helped shape
my young mind in thinking outside the constrictions of welfare
state victimhood.
Brown's statements are just another take on the "You're Making Us
All Look Bad" speeches that Bill Cosby has been delivering to other
blacks he sees as behaviorially degenerate (and in this regard, I
agree with him, Wynton Marsalis, and Stanley Crouch). In Cosby's
case, blunt as his words often have been, he is telling young
blacks in an Hoffer-esque manner that they have the power to
examine themselves and change their own behavior, which, taken
simply, is at least a transcendent viewpoint. Unfortunately,
Brown's comments are just a more bizarre and shallow version of the
"we're all just non-white tabula rasas in the big racist
conspiracy" victim mentality and that you are what others make of
you, not what you make of yourself.
That being said, conspiracy theories are hardly the domain of only
the disenfranchised (whether they actually are or just believe that
they are) minority entertainers. My first brush with the concept of
"wild government agency conspiracy theories" was back in the 1980s
listening to Jello Biafra lyrics ...
|7.30.05 @ 11:46AM|#
Hey SR,
HEy, I thought your "coolest pop ever" line was pretty damn funny.
Don't let haklyut decide what is humorous or not. Make jokes all
you want- it's all we can do these days (see the next article about
the municipalities feeling emboldened by Kelo to take all kinds of
land from individuals).
|8.1.05 @ 8:58AM|#
JP2 was the hardest working pope ever. Back in his prime, he
would do a mass for four hours straight, to the point that he was
barely holding up. His handlers would appear and slowly lead him
from the altar, but then he would break away and throw some more
blessings at the screaming congregation.
And JP2 did awesome splits..
|8.1.05 @ 11:28AM|#
Unlike BAI, I think this encounter may have actually occurred, but even so, I doubt if it has any significance. He probably never heard of Brown before or since, and maybe didn't even know during the interview. (One of William F. Buckley's books has an account of the time he, Malcolm Muggeridge, and David Niven met John Paul, and the Pope was apparently quite confused about who they were and why he was meeting them.) At best, the Pope was as probably told by an aide before Brown entered, "This guy is an American singer," and so when Brown claimed to be leaving the music business, John Paul replied with meaningless pleasnatries. It's absurd to interpret the exchange as "The Pope condoned wife-beating."
gaius marius|8.1.05 @ 2:51PM|#
I seriously doubt the that Soul for Father God ever met and
talked with the Godfather of Soul, anymore than Johnny Carson wrote
material for Al Gore. We live in an age in which bald-faced lying
to sell books comes so easily to public figures that have a camera
or reporter's microphone shoved in their face.
it's also any excuse, any excuse at all to bash the pope around
here, mr iconoclast. :)
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