Even better



 

Let me address a pretty stupid controversy that's being amplified almost as promotional to the recent Sinead O'Connor documentary recently released.  The crux of the controversy is that the Prince Estate would not allow the use of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U", even though the title of the doc is Nothing Compares.  As we all know, Prince wrote that 1990 hit single of hers.  The Estate, specifically his half-sister giving the statement, is pretty disingenuous, which is to blame commerce, or that the Estate has plans to release a live album this year that includes the song, and they feel this would somehow cost them some cash by the competitive timing.  I don't believe any of that for a second.  But let me explain why I am sympathetic to what the unspoken reason actually is, and why they should have just put it all out there.

Sinead had made some headlines after #metoo broke claiming that one night in 1990, Prince, who had invited her to his house, had "terrorized" her, and as she tried to escape, he had chased her down in a car to physically force her back into his lair.  Let's just say it how it is: this is the reason why the Prince Estate is stonewalling her doc, and I think it's a perfectly good reason without all of the other dodgy bullshit added on.  First, there's the fact that Sinead has had a pretty bad record for saying untrue and irresponsible things about Prince even prior to the shield of #metoo.  It's pretty pathetic that she only chose to air this dirt after his death, or in other words 26 years after the fact of the incident, after which Prince was no longer able to defend himself.  But thankfully, this particualr incident (being the only documented interaction between the two stars) has been recollected in a number of Prince biographies so that we can use those to try and calibrate the reality of the situation.  According to Prince's sources, Sinead had arrived at Prince's house already out of her skull.  Which would not be incongruent to the public record concerning her personal habits at that time.  Prince was annoyed by this, what he felt was a lack of professionalism, as he considered this a professional meeting (he had more songs to offer to her) than a social or casual "hang".  As the evening went on, Prince did begin to razz her a bit, taking out his frustration by egging her on about how less talented she was than he, and similarly playing a few mind games to mock her incapacitated ability to understand him.  And she did try to leave at one point.  The reason why Prince, and his bodyguards, chased after her and brought her back was because they felt that she was in no condition to be behind the wheel of a car.

I haven't seen the Nothing Compares doc, so I don't know exactly to what extent it dramatizes this incident.  But I do know that I don't respect the timing of her revelation, and I do side with the Estate for not allowing her to use Prince's song, but I think they should have simply been honest about the reasons behind that decision.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

Sinead has had a pretty bad record for saying untrue and irresponsible things about Prince even prior to the shield of #metoo.

Had no idea; good to know. 

Gaaad dayum, that is some unusually "irresponsible and untrue" slander. 

“Two words for the DEA investigating where prince got his drugs over the decades . Arsenio Hall (AKA Prince’s and Eddie Murphy’s bitch),” the singer-songwriter wrote. “Anyone imagining prince was not a long time hard drug user is living in cloud cuckoo land. Arsenio I’ve reported you to the Carver County Sheriff’s office. Expect their call. They are aware you spiked me years ago at Eddie Murphy’s house. You best get tidying your man cave.”

But I guess "This bitch is crazy" would be a legitimate defense? And I note that her "apology" is one of those putrid anti–apologies that are really not–so veiled denials of what the apology is for.  

“I apologize for my Facebook posts about Arsenio Hall to the extent that anyone thought I was accusing him of acting as Prince’s drug dealer and supplying him with illegal hard drugs, or insinuating that Arsenio had something to do with Prince’s death.”

“I sincerely apologize because those statements would be false, and I retract them unequivocally,” she continued.

(emphasis mine)

I did nothing wrong but I'm so wonderful I'll just martyr myself for the thin–skinned of the world.

Rampop II wrote:

But I guess "This bitch is crazy" would be a legitimate defense?

I sympathize with the fact that she's struggled for many years with mental illness and substance abuse, another classic case of childhood abuse and trauma who tried to find love and salvation in the spotlight and false god of fame and adulation that our culture thrives upon.  And somewhat inevitably, people are drawn to and suckened into the Twittersphere for similar reasons as a similar addiction, and hooked on the thrill of the attention and saying "crazy things".  It should be noted that within days of her initial accusations against Prince and Arsenio, she disappeared for a week or two and wound up in a rehab somewhere.  She has tweeted variations of suicide notes on multiple occasions.  There's a series of Twitter apologies for provocations and accusations she's made (including against her own children) that would look like trolling from anyone else.  Her conversion to Islam, and subsequent Twitter harangues against non-Muslims, has a distinct Rachal Dolezol, self-loathing/self-martyr complex to it.  Maybe the documentary gets into the meat of these dysfunctions in a sympatheitic way, but I doubt that she would be so willing as a participant.  Descriptions have a "legacy" hagiographic flavor to it.

All of her personal struggles and suffering aside, I still have to defend my P.  She's already retracted these claims once, under the threat of a 5 million defamation suit.  Her twitter feed, if nothing else, gives us a reliable pattern of behavior.  And, unfortunately, for too many people in our current media environment, a physical abuse accusation is equivalent to an indictment.  Prince, on the other hand, has no other record of physically abusive behavior against women.  (He could be cruel in other ways, but I digress.)  I suspect that if she would set the record straight then Prince's estate would be more willing to work with her.