SUE NOT-PULLING-ANY-PUNCHES GIRL REPORTER asks, “How would you respond to this statement: African American musicians feel as if you ripped off their music with your hits such as ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Ain’t That a Shame’?”
“Yeah, ain’t that a shame?!” Pat Boone sighs, smiles, and shakes his head. “The funny thing about that song? There I was, having graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in English. And I had to say the word ‘ain’t.’ I tried to fit ‘isn’t’ into the rhythm, but it just didn’t sound right.”
“But to return to the charges . . .”
“Yes, yes. All nonsense. Untrue. Here’s the truth, as I will one day write in my 2006 book, Pat Boone’s America, 50 Years: A Pop Culture Journey through the Last Five Decades. Might as well get started early on publicity.”
Pat Boone then quotes himself from his not-yet-written book while SUE TOP-NOTCH GIRL REPORTER scribbles furiously.
“If there was a master scheme (as it’s been cartooned by agenda-driven ‘researchers’) to create a thoroughly palatable white star, and then get him recording the biggest selling releases from black stars (to exploit them monetarily while obscuring their identities) it sure didn’t track that way in practice. Coming from the early to mid-1950s record business model, more than ever before or since, recording your own ‘covers’ of other people’s charted releases was simply standard operating procedure.”
“So you deny the charges.” SUE SPEEDY GIRL REPORTER writes. . . almost faster than a speeding bullet.
Pat Boone no longer smiles. Dark forces gather behind his smooth white forehead . . . or it’s as if a line of dust settles in the cracks of his trademark white buck shoes.
“I mean, don’t you think that accusation will hurt you in terms of not being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the future? To say nothing of the, well, Christian proselytizing? And your friendship with Sarah Palin. Opposition to gay marriage. No abortion for anyone under any circumstances. . . .”
He leans close to Sue. “It’s a conspiracy,” he whispers. “What about liberal proselytizers. Jane Fonda. The Dixie Chicks.”
SUE ALL-KNOWING GIRL REPORTER knows that Jane Fonda and the Dixie Chicks received their fair share of flack as well. But she doesn’t want Pat Boone to get distracted. “Perpetrated by . . . ?”
About to speak, Pat Boone’s words are truncated by a low rumble of thunder. Storm clouds churn over Metropolis. Clark Kent stands from his desk to look out the window. Comic book readers everywhere hear him contemplating the fact that if a major thunderstorm hits, he’ll have to become a quick-change artist again. He feels almost like a cross-dresser, like a member of the nonexistent group “White Male Superheroes in Business Suits Cross-Dressing Society” (WAMS-SHOD for short), but that thought bubble is cut from the final edit of the comic strip.
The storm CRAASSSHHHS. Rain SSLLASSSHS.
Clark Kent once again excuses himself, offering to go to the coffee shop on the corner for refreshments. “Sugar with your coffee?” he asks. “Cream?”
“Oh, just a nice cold glass of milk for me,” Pat Boone chuckles. But his chuckle isn’t as hearty as when he arrived.
Either the storm or the relentless questions visibly affect Pat Boone’s mood.
As if he himself is outside in the storm, his white skin seems to ossify. His brown eyes darken to the color of the bottom of a rain puddle on asphalt as if he sees into the future, envisioning his own presence in it.
“The conspiracy?” SUE CONSPIRACY-BUFF GIRL REPORTER asks again, drawing him back to the conversation.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Pat Boone says. “Which is why I will write that book in 2006. To explain . . .”
“Explain?”
“Or question,” he says earnestly. “Where’s the America I used to know? It seems like it was here just a moment ago. What happened to it? Where did it go? And who took it away from me?” [Intrepid Reporter’s emphasis.] “Because even though so many of us are committed to God-fearing, family values of the true American spirit, the truth is that our nation has drifted so far off course and downstream, we hardly recognize it anymore.”
“So those who, you claim, will allegedly one day drive us off course are the ones who will prevent you from being inducted?”
Pat Boone shrugs, lost.
“Let me help you out here,” SUE RELENTLESS GIRL REPORTER says. “Listen to this quote from the New Yorker that will appear in June 2010. It’s about that trip you will take to Israel with presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. The one where he says that he’s ‘crazy about Israel,’ where he proclaims, ‘I worship a Jew.’”
“All God-fearing good Christians do.”
“But Huckabee will say it wearing Ray-Bans and a polka-dot shirt with gold cufflinks in the shape of Arkansas! What kind of fashion statement . . .”
Pat Boone pleads, “On that trip I will sing my heart out on ‘Thanks for Just Being You.’”
“I know. I know. And maybe if we could just redo future history, and you could just stick to singing ‘April Love’ all the way to the Pearly Gates.” SUE EMPATHETIC GIRL REPORTER pauses to give her words a chance to sink in. “But here’s what that article will quote you as rhapping (as in ‘rhapsodizing’) in the middle of your song ‘Thanks for Just Being You’:
“Honey, our little girl surprised me today. She said, ‘Daddy, I know I’m gonna grow up to be a wife and a mommy someday. I know what a mommy is, but what’s a wife, really?’
“A wife is the one that feeds and waters and cleans up after that family pet she didn’t want.” There was a wave of knowing murmurs from the believers. “A patient soul that picks up my dirty socks and underwear and handkerchiefs and washes them and puts them back in the drawer so she can do the whole thing again, next week. . . . A good wife is simply a gift from God.”
“See, my point here,” SUE DOGGED-TOUGH-AS-NAILS GIRL REPORTER exclaims, “is that’s the kind of thing that, frankly, makes it difficult for women to support your induction. You want your America back. But what is or will be your America? What about Americans living in ghettos? The homeless? The unemployed? Kids shot in drive-by shootings? Gays unable to marry? Women who’re underpaid?” SUE UNDERPAID GIRL REPORTER glances toward Editor White’s office.
“Women have always been my biggest fans,” Pat Boone defends. He nods toward Lois Lane, whose expression hasn’t changed since she first laid eyes on him. She begins to hum, however, sounding as if she’s making up a song. “To say nothing of you, lest you forget.” His gaze arrows back to Sue.
SUE USUALLY VERBOSE GIRL REPORTER can’t think of a thing to say, unable to explain the Theory of Contradictions to Pat Boone, especially that things won’t always be so, well, black and white, or simplistic, in the future.
Meanwhile, in another part of town, Superman is ZOOMZOOMZOOMING into the eye of the storm. GROWWRR! CRRASH! BOOOMMM! Neon signs across Metropolis short-circuit. Steam from subway grates roils into the atmosphere, almost obscuring our own SUPERHERO member of WAMS-SHOD. The scene is turning into a “Superman-Meets-Batman-in-Gotham City, Girls-and-Boys,” nightmare. CRAAACKK! Lids of garbage cans clank in alleys. RIIIPPPP. American flags are stripped from flagpoles. Superman SOARSOARSOARS to a car wreck, plucking out a little girl clutching a Pat Boone album from a smashed-in rear seat. Superman whooshes across town, his cape seemingly rigid in the stiff breeze, one step ahead of a black coroner’s van with white lettering.
Back at the Daily Planet . . .
“The breakdown of family life and traditional moral values is front-page news” (in the Daily Planet?!) “nearly every day,” Pat Boone says, as if gazing into a crystal ball shaped like a white buck shoe. “Could this really be my America?”
“What is America?” SUE POLITICALLY CORRECT GIRL REPORTER questions. “Isn’t there room for everything, for all of us? Republicans. Democrats. Believers. Nonbelievers. Straights. Gays. Superheroes. Gothamites. Gefiltes. Whitefish. . . .”
Pat Boone shivers. “Back now, today, it�
�s all so clear: You either love Elvis Presley or you love Pat Boone. White bucks versus blue suede shoes.”
“Why’s it always about the shoes?” SUE FASHIONISTA GIRL REPORTER asks.
Lois Lane, now going by LoLa, starts to sing, but it’s difficult to make out the lyrics.
“The good white-buck girls all love me,” Pat Boone continues. “The clean-cut girls who don’t cuss or smoke or engage in sexual activities before marriage. The girls who pray.”
“You think that not one of your fans ever got into trouble or had sex before marriage????”
Tears well up in Pat Boone’s eyes. “No, no,” he sighs. “I refuse to believe that any of my fans . . .”
“But I, Sue, Girl Reporter, swear like a sailor.”
“I’ll pray for you.”
A confused expression forms on Pat Boone’s face—the kind of expression you might have, say, if, in a moment of extreme existential turmoil, you contemplated Lawrence Welk’s inner life.
“I have it!” LoLa jumps up from her chair. She begins to sing the song straight out of the comic book. It’s a tribute to her boyfriend Superman. Pat Boone joins her. As they harmonize, the cover of the comic book seethes and squirms with life. (Comic books have the right-to-life, too.)
CRAAACK! SOCCKKK! BOOOOM! POW! CRRASHH!
Superman must thwart their efforts at singing the song about him. He darts to the shore of a conveniently located lake whose beach, composed of silica sand, he converts to a soundproof plastic dome that he drops over Pat Boone and Lois Lane so no one can hear them sing.
“Another country heard from,” SUE KEEPING-IT-REAL GIRL REPORTER reports. “Why keep the song secret?” she asks Superman.
“I wrote the lyrics,” Superman says.
“Don’t tell me you want to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, too? What, a ‘one-hit wonder’ category?”
Superman shakes his slick black hair. As if he uses steel-hard product, not one strand falls out of place.
The lyrics, an anthem to Superman’s power to keep Metropolis (or the entire USA) safe from villains and tyranny, are revealed only to comic book readers, thus remaining a mystery to the world at large. “Unwittingly, in the nine lines of the song, I reveal my true identity,” says a thought bubble floating over Superman’s head. “The first letter of each word in each line spells out ‘Clark Kent.’ Now I have to prevent it from ever being sung aloud.”
LoLa, now Lois Lane again, and Pat Boone gesture to Superman to lift the plastic dome, agreeing never to sing the song, though they—not being comic book aficionados—haven’t cracked the secret code.
“But suppose that’s the song that could finally propel me into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?” Pat Boone opines.
“It sounds like a theme song for the Republican party,” SUE JUDICIOUS GIRL REPORTER judiciously observes.
“Republicans are people, too,” Pat Boone exhorts.
Tell me about it. “Of course they are.”
Pat Boone tells Sue about how the South African government allowed a mixed-race audience for his concert at his insistence. He cleared the way for black performers, including Little Richard and Fats Domino, and also threatened to quit his TV show when his sponsors forbade him to have Harry Belafonte as a guest.
SUE GETTING-TO-THE-NITTY-GRITTY GIRL REPORTER scribbles as fast as she can.
“And, I bet you didn’t know that my daughter Cherry was married by a Christian and a Jew.” Pat Boone, feeling his oats again, smiles and winks. “Our minister, Jack Hayford, married Cherry and Dan at Church on the Way, and then Rabbi Hillel Silverman of Temple Sinai in Los Angeles prayed over and blessed them at the reception, which was held at Bel Air Country Club.”
Pat Boone stares into Sue’s eyes. “Any relation?” He chuckles, as the remnants of the storm now gust away from Metropolis.
GIRL REPORTER AND FUTURE HIPPIE SUE is unmoved. “Let’s just stick to the music, shall we? What should I say to readers of the Daily Planet about your noninduction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even though the first class of inductees (which includes Fats Domino and Little Richard) won’t take place for twenty-seven more years?”
“How about this,” Pat Boone says:
Even though their political feelings have more in common with Pat Boone than with, say, Mick Jagger, mainstream Americans who listen to popular music from the more edgy, rugged end of the spectrum tend to assume that their political feelings must be unlike those of conservative “squares” like Boone. Thus the professing liberals behind things like MTV’s Rock the Vote seem hopeful about moving election outcomes in their favor essentially by enlisting music fans to vote reflexively against things square.
No wonder the trendy-haired, ear-studded Hollywood types who decide about “induction” into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (it’s no grassroots process, kids!) prefer to keep a known conservative like Pat Boone strangely out of it.”
CONSPIRACY! Rigged by trendy-haired ear-studders. SUE READY-TO-MOVE-MOUNTAINS-FACT-CHECKER GIRL REPORTER decides to nail this down once and for all.
POP BOOM BLAM!!
CRRRAAACCCKKK!!!
Suddenly, all the typewriters in the newsroom evolve into Apple computers. All the reporters’ desks turn into cubicles. The newsroom is transformed from the clack of typewriter keys to the soft tap-tapping of computer keys. Black rotary telephones shrink into BlackBerries. And before you know it, SUE LEAVE-NO-STONE-UNTURNED GIRL REPORTER is Googling the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” on the World Wide Web. She clicks to the link on “Induction Process,” prints out the requirements, and hands a copy to Pat Boone.
Scanning it, Pat Boone exclaims, “‘Twenty-five years since my first release’? Check.”
“‘An impact on rock and roll’? Check!”
“‘Superior style and technique’? ‘Musical excellence’? Check and check!”
“‘Length and depth of career and body of work’? Check!”
Pat Boone reads aloud, “The Foundation’s nominating committee, composed of rock and roll historians, selects nominees each year in the Performer category. Ballots are then sent to an international voting body of more than 500 rock experts. Those performers who receive the highest number of votes—and more than 50% of the vote—are inducted. The Foundation generally inducts five to seven performers each year.”
SUE MOMENTARILY STYMIED GIRL REPORTER and Pat Boone stare at each other.
“Numbers of votes,” Pat Boone admonishes. “No check.”
He crumples the printout and tosses it into the paper shredder.
GROOWWL!! CLAAANK!!!
“I’m listed, according to Billboard, as number ten all-time recording artist. Forty-five million records. One hundred thirty albums. Thirty-eight Top 10 hits, gold and platinum. What more can I do?”
SUE SYMPATHETIC GIRL REPORTER both nods and shrugs. Not that she believes, philosophically, in what Pat Boone believes, but she believes in him, in his sincerity and commitment to wanting his own America back, the America he believes in, even though—outside of comic books and black-and-white TV sitcoms—his America never quite existed, even though he believes it did.
Nevertheless, Pat Boone is right: It should be only about the music.
“I devoted my whole life to music,” he says. “To doing good work. To trying to make a difference. To helping shape young lives.”
He places his palms together as if in prayer.
SUE NEWLY MINTED CHEERLEADER GIRL REPORTER says, “You made a difference to Lois Lane and, well, me. And after all, your recording career will ultimately include everything from Pat Boone Sings the New Songs of the Jesus People to In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy. To say nothing of ‘Tutti Frutti.’”
“Au rutti,” he whispers reverentially.
“Au rutti, indeed!” SUE GETTING-WITH-THE-PROGRAM GIRL REPORTER says. “Let’s look at this objectively. Little Richard and Fats Domino know the truth—how you really helped their careers. Plus, after fifty years you still have fans! How ma
ny other musicians have lasted this long in the business?”
“I’ve been very blessed.” Pat Boone nods.
“Maybe that’s more important than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, anyway?” SUE NO-LONGER-CYNICAL GIRL REPORTER pleads.
As if he doesn’t hear her, Pat Boone says, “Sure, I never pierced my ears or did drugs, but I wore black leather, too.”
“Well, if it’s that important—we could try to start a groundswell of support! The Daily Planet could publish editorials! We could start a petition campaign on Facebook! DC Comics could publish a special issue: SUPERMAN AND PAT BOONE VS. MICK JAGGER AND THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME!”
Clark Kent and Lois Lane glance at Pat Boone and SUE OUTSIDE-AGITATOR GIRL REPORTER. Thousands of readers of comic books now know that Superman not only scooped sand from the shores of the lake but also took a quick baptismal dip in the cleansing waters, thus converting into a BORN-AGAIN SUPERHERO!! Now, fully on the side of Pat Boone’s FAIR AND BALANCED induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Clark Kent aka Superman prepares for a quick change in order to CLACCK POP BOOOOM through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and smash the building to smithereens.
“You think?” Pat Boone asks, his voice quavering with hope.
SUE SUCCUMBING GIRL REPORTER nods.
“But if I fail to be inducted yet again, I might begin to look like a fool . . .”
A FOOL???!!!
YOOOWWZZZAAAAA!!!!
SUE CRACK-INVESTIGATIVE GIRL REPORTER cracks the case!!!
!!!!NEWS FLASH!!!!::::
The wire services light up your life. BEEP BEEP. TYPO! Correction: the wire services light up with life!
Dateline Metropolis: SOMEONE UPSTAIRS, WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS, CONFUSED THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME WITH THE PAT BOONE SONG “FOOLS HALL OF FAME” and he’s been inducted into the wrong hall??!!
Is it all a case of mistaken identity? Is Pat Boone’s publicity shot hung in the incorrect edifice?
SUE EXHAUSTED GIRL REPORTER’s success at unraveling the mystery feels hollow, however. Maybe this explanation is sufficient for the masses who rely on comic books and FOX-TV for their news, but surely it’s more complicated than a case of mistaken identity.
Pat Boone Fan Club Page 22
