Paul O'Donnell: November 2006 Archives

Kirk Franklin just won the American Music Award in the Contemporary Inspirational category, adding to his crowded shelf of Gospel Music Association Dove Awards and Gospel Grammys. Yay, Kirk! In fact, his fellow nominees in the categories are very deserving in themselves: Casting Crowns and Aly & AJ.

What none of these artists deserve is to be lumped into the same award category. Casting Crowns is middle-of-the road white-boy pop rock, while the exceedingly pure Aly and AJ's cover of "Walking on Sunshine" anchors the soundtrack of Disney's remake of its own "Herbie the Love Bug."

Once upon a time, gospel, Christian rock, and inspirational performers were grouped together because their tiny independent labels were only fit to compete against each other. Not anymore. Kirk's first thank you went out to his label Zomba, a mainstream subsidiary of recording giant BMG. The distribution available to Christian Nashville groups rivals any other artist. Instead of a sampler pack of Christian acts—one from each genre within the Christian universe—the AMAs and everyone else ought to free Kirk and the rest of the Christian crowd to compete in their natural categories.

With every winner from Rascal Flatts to Mary J. Blige fulsomely praising God for their brand new statuettes, future Christian winners in the R&B, country, rock, and rap fields will fit right in.

We've always been made to understand that Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Borat, is a satirist, not a simple comedian. Otherwise, his anti-Semitic jokes and poo-poo gags would be, well, just that. But this week, Cohen found out the cost of making a serious point.

Residents of the Romanian town of Glod, a stand-in for Borat's Khazakstani village, and two American college students have filed lawsuits against Cohen and his production company, aimed at having themselves removed from the film. They say the producers misrepresented the nature of the film and induced them on false pretenses to say and do things they wish they hadn't. (The college students also say the producers made sure they were liquored up for the shoot.) Fox, which distributes the film here, has called the lawsuits "fatuous."

The natural defense of a joker like Cohen is he was only kidding--"Geez, can't they take a joke?" But in a Rolling Stone interview that appeared last week, Cohen presses on with his social-conscience defense. His treatment of Khazakstan, which at one time threatened its own lawsuit, reflects badly not the Central Asian nation, says Borat, but those dim enough to believe any country could be so backward. As for his racist and anti-Semitic American dupes (who apparently are that backward), they deserve what they got. The essence of racism, he says, is apathy. "I think it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite," he says to Rolling Stone. "They just had to be apathetic."

But is it apathy that's on view here? What gets Borat's victims in trouble is that they are nice enough to engage with Borat. By the time he gets ugly, they've gone too far with the idiot to put on the brakes without causing more trouble than he's worth. In a recent Slate column, Christopher Hitchens suggests that it's not racism that makes Americans go along with Borat's nonsense, but our tolerance. "It's that attitude of painfully maintained open-mindedness and multiculturalism that is really being unmasked and satirized by our man from the 'stan," writes Hitchens.

Apathy, at any rate, is only half the point. Racism is part of the human condition. We educate our children and ourselves about it precisely because it's alive in us all, ready to chime along with a voice strong enough to make it vibrate. To stoke these human feelings in a couple of drunk frat boys in a trailer isn't much of a feat, or much of a surprise, or much of a satire. The Germans didn't just have to be apathetic, in other words, they needed someone to articulate their racist suspicions. In "Borat," Cohen plays that role. If his unsuspecting victims have a race problem, Borat's it.

Okay, this summer’s drunken anti-Semitic rant was a P.R. faux-pas. But just as Mel Gibson overcame his more veiled anti-Semitic reading of the Gospel in "The Passion of the Christ" by coaxing support for the deeply Catholic film among evangelicals, he's determined to overcome his Cuervo Nacht jabbering by showing his new film, "Apocalypto," to minority audiences.

So far, to the wondering surprise of National Public Radio and the perturbation of The Los Angeles Times, his campaign is working. The Latino Business Association, a Los Angeles group, gave Gibson its Chairman’s Visionary Award. "If that's all it takes to overlook its honoree's notorious anti-Semitic ramblings this summer," the Times’ editorial page announced, "the group is clearly a cheap date."

The Times followed that crack, however, with an account of how much time and effort Gibson is willing to put in. Currying favor with Native Americans as well as Latinos, the director has done Q&A sessions at small screenings as far afield as Oklahoma City and Austin, Texas. Sure, Gibson has a habit of digging himself a deep hole. But it may not matter when you’re the hardest wooing man in show business.

Are Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes going to be married before they get to the altar? The couple has booked a romantic, 15th-century castle north of Rome, and international singing star Andrea Bocelli will sing. Katie's dad has even overcome his misgivings and wishes for a Catholic wedding and agreed to give Katie away.

But unless the Italian government is working from a special rulebook for celebrities, the religious ceremony--a Scientologist minister will officiate--will have to be preceded by a civil marriage. "A religious marriage is not so easy for non-Italians," says a website that arranges dream weddings in Italy, especially if you are not Catholic. "If you wish to marry in a non-Catholic church," says italy-weddings.com, "it is almost impossible to do so without first obtaining a civil marriage license."

Because of Italy's strong historic association with the Roman church, even mainstream Protestant clergy are not automatically licensed to marry in Italy, much less Scientologist ministers. Insiders dismiss reports that the wedding won't be legal, saying the couple has done "all the necessary paperwork." But that phrase, associated on most wedding-in-Italy sites with registering your civil bond, only lends support to the idea that a civil bond will unite the pair before Scientology pronounces them man and wife.

Once upon an innocent time, Mel Gibson smuggled a print of "The Passion of the Christ" to John Paul II, who reportedly murmured, "It is as it was," as the credits rolled. Then it turned out JP2 might not have said it at all, or maybe was talking about Propaganda Night at the old Krakow Kino. Nevermind. Gibson had gone nuclear with an already genius marketing stroke pioneered by the makers of 1999's "The Omega Code"--circulating a faith-based flick to the religious community first to build good will and buzz.

Now the Vatican has taken the conceit further by actually hosting a premiere of New Line Cinema’s "The Nativity Story," this year's faith-based blockbuster. The movie will be screened for the Pontiff on November 26th in the Aulo Paolo VI (Pope Paul VI Hall, above)--the Mother of All Church Basements. Nobody does red carpets like the Vatican, and treading on them will be the film's director, Catherine Hardwicke, screenwriter Mike Rich, and the movie's stars and producers.

New Line couldn't pay for this kind of publicity--they couldn't be, right?--assuming that Benedict XVI's vetters have checked out "The Nativity" for theologically correctness, and the film will get His Holiness's Nihil Obstat (Latin for one thumb way up). Not to mention the quotes on the ads: "It is as it was!"--Benedict XVI.

The question used to be, can a Jesus band ever not sing about Jesus? These days, the question, asked by The Denver Post's Ricardo Baca, has become: Can a band sing about Jesus without being called a Jesus band?Baca sympathizes...

Did bookstore mega-chain Borders ban a young adult novel because the book implied sex was as good as soda pop?Borders' recent decision not to stock the young adult novel "Pop!" has caused some puzzlement in the publishing industry. Though penned...