Amerika

So this is what made Tipper Gore flip her bit back in the day. That, of course, was “Darling Nikki” performed by the artist formerly known as Prince (RIP). That was how I and several of my immature teenage sidekicks used to get back at Mom for making us stop behaving like pseudo-sapient primates.

Yet, as Prince aged, he came to espouse a philosophy more in line with Tipper than Nikki. He once shocked his libertine fandom by stating the following.

“God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out,” he told the magazine. “He was, like, ‘Enough’.”

So that’s what happens if too many people grab a hold of Nikki and go upstairs and grind? Well, Prince didn’t claim to be converted to Christianity. He saw it as more of an enlightenment.

“I don’t see it really as a conversion,” he said. “More, you know, it’s a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix’.”

This is not a shocker. Generally this is a logical reaction to the impact of the whole Darling Nikki lifestyle has over time. It’s fun at first and then the hate facts about lifestyle are begrudgingly acknowledged as drag sets in. Thus many people tend to fall into grace as C.S. Lewis put it. This seems particularly garish and jarring when we see it among the wild, hyper-sexualized rock singers and other entertainers who realize the cost of their lifestyles. Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper have both been born again. Cooper even cast it as a rebellion against counterculture.*

“Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s rebellion.” “Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll is easy. True Christianity … that’s rebellion.”

And this happens throughout the most radical counterculture. Howard Stern and Steven Tyler portray one lifestyle in their public content and then separate their daughters from it rigorously. The lesbian coprophages that Howard Stern interviews as part of his radio freakshow would be shot through the chest if they set foot on his lawn. The Obamas may party with ‘Yonce and JayZ, but their daughters attend Sidwell Friends.

We see the same with Prince. He made his money selling sexual sin like the Whore of Babylon. But he only lasted 57 years because of the extent to which he attempted to avoid the lifestyle he glorified to others in much of his music. Yep, when it came time to grind with Darling Nikki, an older, wiser Prince would only do it with someone else’s mentulla. The dichotomy did him in at last. He received an anti-opiate “save shot” days before he finally met his demise.

I’m firmly convinced he fell victim to the Hollywood Dichotomy. You can profess Christianity,** but can only serve one master in the end. I can only hope that Prince wasn’t claimed at last by the darker master that much of his pop-rock lifestyle ultimately served.

For those who care, take a lesson from this. If a person lives his own life diametrically opposite from how he suggests you live yours; then you probably do not want to heed his advice. People who are doing what they are supposed to do in life properly, do not suffer a dichotomy –- Hollywood or otherwise.

*-Dare I say it? A Neo-Reaction.
**-Or any other form of higher spiritual enlightenment or religious faith.

Tags: christianity, hollywood, prince, tafkap