Tom Irregardless and Me

Tom Irregardless and Me

Tom Harley

All persons with names like ‘Irregardless’ are real though generally composite. You can meet them in my circuit or even yours. Events related are faithfully depicted except for a few that I’ve made up. Persons with names recognizable from history or current events—you’re nuts!—it’s not those people at all!

because we have become a theatrical spectacle in the world, and to angels and to men.

(1 Corinthians 4:9)

That being the case, let’s give them some theater!

###

Let’s skewer the liars who slander the Christ.

Let’s pull down the house on the axis lords.

Let the seed-pickers unite.

Tom Irregardless and Me

By

Tom Harley

Smashwords edition

Copyright © 2016 Tom Harley

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated to:

Michelle—with whom I have stared down many a villain.

Amber—who is enormously popular with the Karen group who have been through so much.

Luka—who keeps wandering off to Serbia because that’s where his roots are.

The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, should they learn of this dedication, will not acknowledge it in any way.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Prince

Chapter 2 – Sam Herd

Chapter 3 – Tom Irregardless

Chapter 4 – The Regional Convention

Chapter 5 – Enemies

Chapter 6 - Suffering

Chapter 7 – The God of Football

Chapter 8 – Plato

Chapter 9 – Pipe Dreams

Chapter 10 - Online

Chapter 11 – The Pew Report

Chapter 12 – John Wheatnweeds

Chapter 13 – Joel Engardio

Chapter 14 - Joe Paterno

Chapter 15 – Dr. Mike ‘Ace’ Inhibitor

Chapter 16 – The New World Translation

Chapter 17 – Me

Chapter 18 – Sam Herd

Afterword – Black Mack, Slow Joe, and Davey the Kid

About the Author

Follow or Contact the Author

CHAPTER 1 – PRINCE

The tip of the iceberg does not choose its top spot. So if it reveals something unseemly, it’s hardly sporting to harp on it. So it is with Doctor Klitzman. The psychiatric iceberg has rotated to thrust him into our line of vision. He’s the whistleblower. We’ll slam him—it’s unavoidable, but it is really the cowards lying safely beneath that we are after. Dr. Klitzman himself is doubtless a great guy.

Tom, he sounds like a conscientious man

I’m sure he is, and the next time I have problems in the control tower, I’m heading straight to him.

Dr. Klitzman is like Daniel, apologizing for his wayward countrymen. He is like Peter, taking the heat for his fellow disciples, who all thought the Lord off his nut for saying what he did. He is like me, cut down before two hundred elders—I can’t believe any brother would ask that, the brother said—who hears from Tom Brexit upon returning to his seat: I wanted to ask that, too. He is like himself, daring to slander Prince, even though he never thought of it that way.

Prince hadn’t been dead two months when Dr. Klitzman wrote CNN.com to declare that he had died of VIP syndrome. He didn’t know for sure, of course, but he did know that VIP syndrome was bad stuff. It had killed Michael Jackson, Joan Rivers, and Elvis Presley. Very likely it had also killed Prince.

Can anyone hear this diagnosis without wondering what an insufferable brat Prince must have been? VIP syndrome! Surely he was the stereotypical celebrity: gorgeous on the outside, obnoxious on the inside. Dr. Klitzman has waved a red flag before me and I’m charging! Call Prince a brat, will you? If he hadn’t slandered Prince, I’d let it go. But he did slander him. He’s toast. He doesn’t really deserve it as the whistleblower. It’s the cowards hiding behind him I want, but I can’t get at them. He’ll have to do. He’ll understand.

What a dreadful illness VIP syndrome must be. Only a truly terrible person could have it. Prince must have been a real . . . but wait! Read the CNN.com article! Unlike any other illness known to man, it’s not the afflicted one who displays the symptoms of VIP syndrome! It’s the doctor treating him! He goes weak at the knees upon encountering a pop star and neglects to do his job! In fact, read carefully and you will discover that VIP syndrome is not an illness of any specific person. It simply occurs when doctors treat an important patient as special, making exceptions to standard procedures. The doctors seek to accommodate these patients, foregoing appropriate tests and safety measures because the VIP might find these inconvenient. That’s what Dr. Walter Weintraub said. He ought to know, for he coined the term in 1964. Doctors who bend the rules to provide special care to special patients can end up killing them, writes Rory Carroll in theguardian.com. When that happens, it is on account of VIP syndrome.

This is an awful lot of pussyfooting around so that doctors can cover their behinds. Why not just say that they wet themselves in the presence of a celebrity? Why obscure it with a mysterious VIP syndrome that occurs? It is because the truth is just too embarrassing: for all his education and lofty community stature, the doctor is no more mature than any squealing adolescent. He is so blinded by hero worship that he drops the ball. Conscience stricken afterward when his patient dies, he blames, not himself, but his patient, who suffered from VIP syndrome to such an extent that even the great doctor couldn’t save him! He wouldn’t have suffered at all if the doctor had been mature!

Few performers moved like Prince. At 57 years of age, he hurt. He had pain. He wanted it to go away. That way, he could dive right back into what drove him. Wasn’t there a way to make that pain vanish? Yes, there was. Opioid medication! His doctor had prescribed them. They must be okay. They worked fantastic. Good! Back to work!

Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, he worried a little. Maybe he wondered about taking more and more of those pills. Maybe he—ah, no matter, that’s what doctors are for. They’ll make sure it’s all okay.

Or maybe he didn’t worry in the back of his mind. Maybe there wasn’t unoccupied space back there. He was always creating. His purple reign over the music industry isn’t over yet, wrote Nicole Lyn Pesce. He leaves behind a cache of unreleased music so vast that his estate could put out a posthumous album every year for the next century . . . featuring thousands of secret songs, albums and yes, even a movie. Got it? That’s what he did in his spare time. He didn’t spend it second-guessing his doctor. He wasn’t the most balanced guy in the world, was he? But that’s how it is with genius. It’s brilliant in one area, clueless in another, and completely vulnerable, absolutely dependent on others to guide it through things it doesn’t notice.

We worship celebrities like gods, Dr. Klitzman writes. They appear on our smartphone screens, our TVs and our computers, and loom high above us in movie theaters, larger than life, seemingly more beautiful and glamorous than the rest of us. For good or bad, doctors are humans like everyone else, wowed by celebrities, and don’t always proceed as they should when treating them . . . I have treated VIP patients, and I indeed did feel intimidated, awed, and privileged.

Another doctor adds:

Celebrities demand much more than the average person and rightly so because they are in front of cameras and on the red carpet.

Rightly so! he says.

Prince’s cook cooked for him. His accountant did his taxes for him. His lawn mower mowed his lawn for him. His plumber unclogged the toilet for him. His tailor put clothes on him. How come his doctor couldn’t doctor him? Prince needed someone with backbone. He needed someone to be firm. Cancel those concerts! That way you can live to do others! He’d fuss a bit, but he would have accepted it; he wasn’t stupid. He needed a strong hand, not hero worship. Had his doctor been one of his spiritual brothers, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, he would be alive today. Jehovah’s Witnesses are immune to VIP syndrome.

VIP syndrome, my rear end! they would have said. Put that guitar down! You can pick it up later. What? Fox Theater? Atlanta? How many expected? Cancel it! Look, you need to get some issues cleared out! You may have to check in somewhere. They’ll forgive you. You can throw them a free concert later. Do whatever you must, and you’ll live to perform at 80! It’s what he needed and would have accepted. He didn’t want to be worshipped.

Many celebrities are used to being treated as special, not having to wait in line, and getting around bureaucratic obstacles the rest of us face, snivels up another medical writer. Why imply that Prince was one of them? The doctor desperately wants to save face. He doesn’t want to admit his immaturity. So he concocts a story couched in medical terminology that puts the onus on Prince! He slanders Prince so as to cover his professional rear end! I won’t put up with it!

When my kids were ten they used to pull this sort of stunt. They used to point fingers at each other and cry, he did it, not me! I leaned on them and they grew up. I’m glad they never stumbled upon this medical bunch, who would have undone all my hard work.

But the doctor is not done trashing Prince’s name; he’s just getting started. He floats the question:

Had Prince seen a psychiatrist, particularly one who specializes in addiction? Unfortunately, mental illness, including substance abuse, is often treated not by psychiatrists, who have specific training in caring for these ailments, but by others.

WHAT?! Now Prince is not just a brat with VIP syndrome—now he is mentally ill! What a mess he is! No wonder the finest doctors couldn’t help him!

This is not to be believed! Come clean, doctor, as to how Prince became dependent upon your opioids in the first place! Come clean about the doings of your reckless pharmaceutical chums! Leave Prince alone and do some soul searching!

Soon after Dr. Klitzman’s letter, another doctor chimed in. Dr. Chris Johnson wrote that he is

forced to paint an unflattering picture of the industry that I have been a part of for the last 15 years. I wish I could tell you that this epidemic was due to an honest mistake. That the science was unclear or had mixed results that only later became evident. But I can’t. I also wish I could tell you that the only reason the problem persists is a ‘lack of physician awareness.’ But I won’t. The reason this opioid problem started and the reason it continues is sadly for the most American reason there is: business.

At one time, Dr. Johnson points out, American doctors prescribed opioids as did doctors everywhere: for pain relief from cancer or acute injury. He then tells of a drug company, introducing a new opioid product in 1996, that swung for the fences. It didn’t want to target just cancer patients. It wanted to target everyone experiencing everyday pain: joint pain and back pain, for example:

To do this, they recruited and paid experts in the field of pain medicine to spread the message that these medicines were not as addictive as previously thought. . . . As a physician in training, I remember being told that the risk of addiction for patients taking opioids for pain was less than one percent. What I was not told was that there was no good science to suggest rates of addiction were really that low. That ‘less than one percent’ statistic came from a five-sentence paragraph in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980. It has come to be known as the Porter and Jick study. However, it was not really a study. It was a letter to the editor; more like a tweet. You can read the whole thing in 90 seconds.

Decisions emerging from evidence-based medicine are fine, but you are permitted to doubt them. In the lab, they work tolerably well. In the real world, they are trumped by money as often as not. But you don’t find that out until you are well along the rosy path they’ve shoved you down.

Does the industry that made the drugs that killed Prince come crawling to his crew, friends, and fans to beg forgiveness? No. It sends one of its customers to transfer blame to Prince himself for allowing VIP syndrome to occur! In today’s arena of sexual harassment accusations, the mere hint of blaming the victim brings instantaneous wrath. But the medicine man doesn’t hesitate to do it to Prince. I’ll side with the performer’s bodyguard, Romeo, any day. Fiercely loyal to his boss and friend, he shoves back at some reporter trying to plant the notion that Prince was an addict: He may have had to go to the doctor and they prescribed something for him but as far as his abusing drugs, that’s not him. Yeah! I don’t want to hear doctors blaming Prince for VIP syndrome! I want to hear Romeo defending him like a grizzly bear its cub!

Get these pill peddlers away from here so we can restore Prince’s good name! He wasn’t obnoxious and he wasn’t hard to please. In 2003, he was baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He afterward credited his new faith for turning his life around. His lyrics, once breathtakingly raunchy, cleared right up. You only have to meet Prince for a few minutes to realize the extent to which God rather than the colour purple, now influences how he lives, the Daily Mirror wrote. He didn’t swagger around at the Kingdom Hall he attended, as some might expect from a celebrity. Instead, he wore a plain business suit and it could be hard to pick him out. Some described him as shy.

New to the faith, it didn’t take long before Prince cast his eye upon the Kingdom songs that are sung at each meeting’s beginning, midpoint, and end. Maybe he could, you know, spice them up a little. Remix a few. With the best of motives, he began doing just that. CDs were released and began to circulate among the friends. Whenever that sort of thing happens among Jehovah’s Witnesses, it happens fast, for every Witness knows every other Witness. The Governing Body caught wind of it. Would they be flattered that Prince stooped to iron the kinks out of their music, like Mozart repairing the little ditty his employer’s (another Prince!) house musician had composed? Would they be jellified with VIP syndrome? If the learned doctors had turned to mush, what chance had bumpkins like they?

Prince is reworking our music, and rightly so! Would they say that?

They excoriated him: ‘Get your hands off those songs! Those aren’t your songs! They’re OUR songs! They’re not pop, they’re not rock, they’re not funk! They are KINGDOM SONGS! Do you know how to spell ‘copyright?!’ Touch them again and you’re toast!’

Then they sent out letters to the congregations telling Witnesses not to play those CDs because they weren’t authorized. They managed to overcome their VIP syndrome pretty well, didn’t they? (Dr. Klitzman’s colleagues would have let Prince gown up and lend a hand in the operating room) The Governing Body told him to keep his hands off their songs! Of course, they were nice about it; they always are. Their letter acknowledged his good intentions, but they laid down the law. I’ll bet Prince found it refreshing to be told off! What a change of pace from toadying doctors.

Whenever the Governing Body weighs in on celebrity, it is to discourage it. Don’t chase after it, they say, do the ministry instead. Does having celebrities in your midst somehow bolster your legitimacy as an organization? Some of the silliest people in the world are celebrities—all of them really, except our guys. Among the congregations, word spread quickly after Prince was baptized, but there were no updates. Witnesses don’t do that; they don’t keep tabs on celebrities in their midst. It wouldn’t be hard to do, for they have precious few of them, but that’s just it—they’re not precious to them. I mean, they are, but no more so than anyone else.

So when Prince performed half-time at the 2008 Super Bowl, I didn’t know his status at all. Was he a spiritual giant, a spiritual weakling, or had he moved on completely to other things? After watching the show, I doubted he was doing anything spiritually at all. Many following along on television were taken aback. Didn’t he use his guitar neck as a giant phallic symbol? We’re not a religion known to do that. As an expert in all things JW, I was deluged with requests for comment. Or at least you never know when they may start. So I examined the video carefully.

Hmm. You know, it did look that way. But not everyone agreed. Even smuthead personalities who would have loved it that way conceded it might have been accidental. The way you strap on an electric guitar, you run the risk of seeming risqué, especially if your silhouette is projected on a screen. There’s a reason those twenty-four elders from Revelation are playing harps and not electric guitars! If people want to be hypersensitive, they can be hypersensitive, said Rolling Stone’s Gavin Edwards. Those trombones are phallic, too. What are you going to do? I didn’t know that about trombones. I promptly threw mine in the trash.

Many weighed in like Scott Cohen, who toured with a band, who had a music degree from Syracuse University, who ranked Prince concerts among his favorites, and who declared himself fed up with any phallic accusation. "Prince dedicates every show to Jesus Christ and anyone who knows about his current beliefs knows that he will no longer swear or perform songs like Darling Nikki . . . etc. . . . I thought the Super Bowl performance was terrific and didn’t notice any phallic nothing." So there!

The harshest criticism came from that small subset of folk who can’t stand Jehovah’s Witnesses. I mean, there are a lot of folks who don’t care for us; we wake them up when they’re sleeping late. I don’t mean these people. I mean the smaller bunch who positively loathe Jehovah’s Witnesses, some of them ex-Witnesses themselves who went sour, like Vic Vomodog. Their comments took the form of gotchas. Gleefully, they anticipated seeing Prince cast out of the religion! And if he wasn’t? Well, that would just prove (to them) the Witnesses’ hypocrisy.

You don’t pay these grousers any mind. These are the same people who lambaste Witnesses for being mind-control cultists who forbid personal expression. Say what you want about Prince, with or without the phallic tempest: he certainly did express himself, didn’t he? But in the wake of his death, having become more familiar with his spirituality, I can now easily picture him performing his heart out at the halftime show, lost in his own world, oblivious to stage effect, while show promoters manipulate perception to create the lewd imagery they so revel in.

Prince cleaned up his act upon becoming a Witness: I have a responsibility to children that come to concerts to not expose them to anything that would be considered raunchy or risqué, he told CNBC. Old-timers will hear a distinct echo. Sixty years ago, an equally famous celebrity also cleaned up his act. In 1947, Mickey Spillane wrote his first novel I the Jury in nineteen days because he needed a down payment for a house. The book was an instant sensation and sold over six million copies. Thereafter, Spillane delighted in taunting the highbrow writers he outsold, writers who looked down upon him, promising them that he would never write a book in which a character had a mustache or drank cognac since he didn’t know how to spell those words.

‘I the Jury’ was deliriously violent, even by today’s standards:

I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel . . . and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling.

Then he became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses: The guy who brought broads and blood to the reading masses is a Jehovah’s Witness, a fundamentalist [group] that preaches the imminent end of the world. ‘There’s nothing phony about them. Everything they say is true,’ says Spillane, a one-time ‘nominal’ Protestant converted years ago by a Jehovah’s Witness who knocked on his door.

In 1952, he told Life magazine: There are more books on the way, but they won’t contain the things that bolster the excuses for the moral breakdown of this present generation. I’ve changed my work and course of action to be in harmony with Jehovah’s kingdom. Spillane didn’t write again for 10 years. When he did, the violence had tamed right down. He and Prince did what all do upon becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses—they clean up their act.

I didn’t think it possible that Prince could go door to door as Witnesses do. Surely it would be a media sensation. But I hadn’t reckoned that the media panics at the sight of Jehovah’s Witnesses approaching, as does everyone else, and runs in terror lest they get caught in a Bible updraft. Once Prince headed toward that Kingdom Hall, the media backed off. They might spot him with another Witness but be afraid to approach—(gulp) what if that other Jehovah’s Witness tries to talk to us? Let’s stop by Paisley Park tomorrow instead and see if he’s home. So Prince was free to do what he wanted.

But the door-to-door ministry? Could he really have taken part in that? He told The Daily Mirror: My hair is capable of doing a lot of things. I don’t always look like this. Exactly. Put him in a business suit in the most unlikely context—someone’s doorstep, with a Bible, and who in a thousand years is going to identify him as Prince? Some came close. Has anyone ever told you that you look like Prince? a householder asked. It’s been said, Prince replied and then continued with his presentation.

But in the early days, he wasn’t so discreet. He was more awkward. Didn’t he show up with his entire entourage? The following from the Minneapolis Star Tribune is too much, it really is:

On the afternoon of Yom Kippur in 2003, a Jewish couple in Eden Prairie opened their door to discover the 5-foot-2 singer standing in front of them. Even though a Vikings football game was on, they invited him in. My first thought is, ‘Cool, cool, cool. He wants to use my house as a set. I’m glad! Demolish the whole thing! Start over!’

They did and thought these things because VIP syndrome occurred. Forget Yom Kippur! Forget the Vikings! But Prince didn’t talk about using their home for a set, which would have required demolition. He began to talk about God, which did not require it. VIP syndrome instantly vanished. I said, ‘You know what? You’ve walked into a Jewish household, and this is not something I’m interested in,’ the woman told him. Demolishing the house would have been preferable!

Can I finish? Prince asked. VIP syndrome must have still been lurking somewhere because he stayed twenty minutes. I know it was VIP syndrome because when I heard those three words, I tried them myself and had to remold my flattened nose from the slammed door.

For anyone newsworthy, the major media news sources will have their obituaries pre-written. The older the newsmaker, the more likely this is to be true. They must have had to have scrambled when Prince passed away. He was 57 and vigorous. Could anyone have anticipated he would drop so unexpectedly? Sources like the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times got their facts straight in reporting his death; missteps were few and trivial. Others spoke to Vic Vomodog and accepted his credentials as someone who used to be a Witness. I wonder how much the Watchtower makes off his death? he sneered, as though no one in history had ever supported a cause they had believed in. In fact, it doesn’t look like they made a dime; Prince died intestate.

The Daily Mail quoted another who said that he had read Facebook posts as recently as six months ago saying that Prince was going door to door appealing for donations like all other worshippers do. Good reporting! I always cite Facebook posts from ‘someone’ whenever I am trying to get to the bottom of things! This fellow would have us believe that multi-millionaire Prince spent his time grubbing for quarters and dimes to satisfy the church. Even if the church did solicit for funds, why would Prince not simply have reached into his pocket? But in covering Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Daily Mail is in fearful uncharted waters. They don’t dare ask a Witness—what if that Witness should start witnessing to them? Wait—wasn’t there someone somewhere who read something on Facebook? That’ll do.

There actually was a time when Witnesses did ask for contributions—not much, a dime or quarter to cover printing costs, from anyone accepting literature. But the televangelists began hawking products costing scores, even hundreds, of dollars. Hit with demands for sales tax, they balked. ‘What about Jehovah’s Witnesses with their magazines?’ they dodged. So the Watchtower declared that no one would ask for a dime from that point on; the work would be completely self-funded. That way, nobody could mistake its non-commercial nature.

To be sure, there was some clunky explanation at first that our work was one of Bible education, performed free of charge, and that householders could donate toward it if they wished. It was so awkward that it fizzled almost immediately; didn’t the wording seem to suggest tens or twenties were sought, not dimes or quarters? The householder would clamp his hand over his wallet—I didn’t get to where I am by giving away money! I missed the old days: Here’s a magazine. Give me a quarter so I can print another one, but I could no longer do it because of the televangelists! Ah, well—now there is the internet, and there are no printing costs. Nobody thinks of donating for bandwidth.

How Prince must have cherished being around real people at the Kingdom Hall among whom VIP syndrome didn’t occur. Jehovah’s Witnesses regard each other as spiritual brothers and sisters; they did not feel intimidated, awed, and privileged in his presence as did the doctors; they just hung out with him. In the congregation, he was Brother Nelson. He entered, sang, sat, commented, and left like anyone else. At large conventions there might be a buzz when he was spotted but nothing more. No one mobbed him. No one approached him for selfies.

I’m not that complicated of a guy, he told one interviewer, if you know my music, you know me. Kim Berry, his hair stylist said: They wanted this mystique to be bigger than it was and he just wanted to be treated regular. She relates an early conversation with him: ‘What did they tell you when you first started working for me?’ and I said, ‘Oh they gave me all kind of rules.’ He said, ‘I’ve never told anyone anything like that.’

Really, I’m normal, he told another interviewer. A little highly-strung, maybe. But normal. But so much has been written about me and people never know what’s right and what’s wrong. I’d rather let them stay confused. You have to do that! It’s the only way a modest person can deal with VIP syndrome, which will not only occur but it will stomp you into the ground like a rhinoceros! Bob Dylan had to do it, too—let them stay confused. Media would pepper him with questions. He’d feed them nonsense. They’d accuse him of not being cooperative. He’d protest that he was being cooperative and they were just asking the wrong questions.

Unfortunately, Prince loses control of his image upon his death. It might have been useful to have had a will for more than the routine reasons. The music company releases unreleased music with much fanfare. To the extent it is from his pre-Witness raunchy days, he would hate it. He deliberately kept that stuff buried. Respect for him should serve to keep it buried. Alas, groupies know no such thing. They’ll trot it all out, thinking they’re doing him honors. I could be wrong on this, but it’s not likely. Spiritually, he and I were on the same page, and spirituality is all that counts with Jehovah’s Witnesses; everything else is just so much window dressing.

And what’s with the obligatory purple? He would hate that, too, unless I’m much mistaken. You couldn’t even get him to sign his autograph. The man didn’t want to be worshipped. Engrossed with Larry Graham once in a backstage Bible discussion, he suddenly jerked his head up. Hey, I think I’m supposed to be onstage now! It’s not hard to discern where his heart was.

That is why he had to stay mysterious. That is why Bob Dylan fed them nonsense. Godless groupies in search of a god to worship—Prince and Dylan get caught in the crosshairs! That is why Dylan deliberately wrote some wretched music—to throw them off track. I wrote this one to get the hippies off my lawn, Dylan said of one dog. It didn’t work. The hippies did move off his lawn, but they set up camp on his front and back porch.

A former Bethelite told me of how Prince had visited there years ago. Prince is out in the hallway! a co-worker exclaimed. But Tony, unimpressed by celebrity, just kept on typing. Did they let him tour in peace? I’m sure they did. A full half of them likely had no idea who he was.

I was standing in the back and facing the door and waiting for someone I’d invited, and I was standing there talking to a brother, and Prince had been at meetings at a couple of different locations, said Anne Berry, a pioneer in his congregation. I was just standing there and all of a sudden, in he walks. I thought, ‘He just wants to be treated like an average person,’ so I just kind of acknowledged him, and he came in and sat down. She added: I think he wanted to be private and my observation is: he had to have his creative outlet. Maybe he just needed it to survive.

Covering his death, reporters stepped gingerly through that Kingdom Hall door in Minneapolis as though setting foot on Mars. The people seemed nice enough. And the meeting was in a plain auditorium—how threatening could that be? They sniffed around carefully for VIP syndrome and couldn’t detect a trace. What a strange world! Surely there would be a special ceremony for Prince. But, no! All they heard was a single line at the meeting’s end: Our brother Prince Rogers Nelson has fallen asleep in death, the same as they would have heard for any congregation member. All the rest was some kind of religious stuff. They contacted Bethel in New York City—surely the whole place would be draped in purple. Bethel said: We are saddened to hear about the death of Prince Rogers Nelson who was baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2003. He found fulfillment as a Witness in sharing his faith with others.

Beneath a photo of the congregation’s information board, as though inviting readers to check for themselves, the Daily Mail wrote: The church has no photos of Prince, their most famous ‘publisher’ on the walls because ‘that would be glorifying an individual.’ VIP syndrome didn’t occur at the Kingdom Hall; that’s why Prince liked it there. The interior of the Klitzman Church would have been wallpapered with Prince photographs.

Reporters searched and searched for something they could use. Aha! They found it! A congregation member who said he knew that outside of the congregation, Prince was a genius at what he did! It wasn’t deification. But it seemed as close as they were going to get. So