Hickey's 1,000th Post - With Johnny Rivers and Orestes Brownson

Looks like I batted out a grand of these posts. Good practice and exercises each morning along with my prayers and devotions amid sets of 100 push-ups/pull ups/sit-ups and throw-ups. Toweling off the beads of sweat and penitential droplets of tears, I think of what to write about usually after a bracing cup of hot coffee from Kean or perhaps a hotter bit of news.

I work in the poor side of town and have the greatest regard for the families who struggle to meet tuition costs with the heroic help of the Leo Alumni. This is a BS-free Black and White Educational Coalitional - no Progressive helps in any way, shape, or form.

So to celebrate, click my post title for vintage Johnny Rivers* and read some youthful 19th Century American Thought by a guy buried at Sared Heart Chapel at Notre Dame, but by Progressive intellectual bigots - Orestes Brownson.

From Protestant Journalism in Brownson's Quarterly Review

We distinguish between the journal and the newspaper. The newspaper originated some three hundred years ago, if we are not mistaken, in the commercial city of Venice, and was designed chiefly to communicate such intelligence as was of special interest to merchants and bankers, or, as we say now, to the business classes. Gradually it enlarged its scope, especially when transferred to England, and gave political intelligence, as well as banking and mercantile information; but it confined itself to giving current news, and avoided all political and other discussions. It grew naturally out of the invention and general adoption of the art of printing, and simply superseded the intelligence which had been, from time immemorial, communicated by written instead of printed letters. The newspaper was not only a harmless, but a useful invention.

The journal may indeed publish news, but it is not by any means a newspaper. It is of recent origin, and owes its birth to the French revolution of 1789, that fountain of so many evils, and, to human eyes, of no good. The design of the journal is to influence and control public opinion, and, through public opinion, to influence and control public action. The public to which it is addressed may be a party, a faction, a coteric, or a sect, but its design is always to influence and control the thought and action of its public, whether its public be larger or smaller; and it seeks to do this by discussion, by arguments addressed to reason or prejudice, and by declamation, or inflammatory appeals to passion. The so-called independent journalism, represented by such journals as the N. Y. Herald, the N. Y. Tribune, and the N. Y. Sun of this city, professes to be independent of all parties, sects, and cliques, and to set forth the views and convictions of its management alone, or what its management believes, or pretends to believe, is for the public interest. But it must have popular support, a wide popular circulation, and, to gain this, it must court popular opinion, and study not to outrage popular prejudice. It can afford to have no unpopular principles, nor to support an unpopular cause. Indeed it cannot afford to have any principles, especially any religious principles, for any decided principles are sure to be unpopular with one or another section of the public. It, in fact, has no positive religion of any sort; and whatever religion it favors, is so vague and indeterminate that it is as good as none at all. Its influence in regard to religion is either to encourage infidelity pure and simple, or perfect indifferentism. Its religions is secularism, and it is less really independent and more fatal to all the great interests of society than even the partisan or sectarian press.

Satan never made a better hit than when he invented independent journalism; and the New York Herald, which so admirably represents the spirit of the age, should be, as we have no doubt it is, a great favorite with him. None but a renegade or bad Catholic could ever have founded and sustained such a marvellous journal; nor could even a bad Catholic have done it without extraordinary satanic assistance. The very design of the journal is satanic. It throws the forming and directing of public opinion and action into the hands of men who are responsible only to the laws, and hardly to them; who have and can give no guaranty of their wisdom, who scout all authority but their own, and proceed always on the assumption of their own infallibility, and that of the public to which they appeal. Independent journalism is Protestantism raised to its highest power, the deification of private judgment, and a fitting forerunner of Antichrist. Its power is immense, and its despotism is in proportion to its power. . . .

The greatest difficulty a Catholic reviewer encounters is in convincing Catholic laymen and journalists that catholic means catholic. The difficulty is almost as great as that of convincing certain routinist philosophers that nothing is nothing, not something. If religion is catholic, it is supreme and universal, the supreme law in every department of life, extending to every species of human activity. Whether we eat or drink, whether we sleep or wake, whatever we do, we are to do it for the glory of God. The goods of this life, whether national or political, social or economical, are never secured, or, if secured, cease to be goods,

http://www.orestesbrownson.com/index.php?id=5

* Poor Side of Town was a signal to every hormone bursting (abeit, tempered by a Powerful Catholic counter-balance of moral and ethical dignity and the gentling balm of our better natures) south side male (circa 1967) that a 'two-hander' dance would put you in close proximity to the iconic beauties of parish life - Sharon Monahan, Nancy McNicholas, Marita McEnery, Joanne Stefanu, Carolyn Velos, Cynthia Prochaska, Shirley Ward, Rose Proszak, Dianne Zackevich, Denise O'Malley, Ginny O'Malley, Eileen O'Connor, Michele Fiscelli, and Mary Gill. As the needle cut through those grooves, young men were transported to Elysium** - in Little Flower Gym, Leo Cafeteria, and at Mendel, Marist, Brother Rice and I am sure at the public schools.


"Poor Side Of Town," signaled a significant change in Johnny Rivers' musical direction. "I had this tune I'd been working on, and I kept playing it for Lou," Rivers says. "It took me about six months to finish. We cut it with Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn and Hal Blaine. I did my vocal performances live with the band. I sat and played my guitar and sang. There weren't any overdubs. So we said it could use some singers and maybe some strings. That's the time we got together with (arranger) Marty Paich."

Paich, who arranged for Mel Torme and Ray Charles, put lavish strings on "Poor Side.'' However, Adler and Rivers found Imperial reluctant to tamper with a winning formula. "Al Bennett and those guys were goin' 'Man. don't start comin' out with ballads. You're gonna kill your career. You got a good thing goin' with this funky trio rock sound, stay with that."' "Poor Side Of Town" became Rivers' first #1 record.

http://www.johnnyrivers.com/hits.html

**

And those that have three times kept to their oaths,
Keeping their souls clean and pure,
Never letting their hearts be defiled by the taint
Of evil and injustice,
And barbaric venality,
They are led by Zeus to the end:
To the palace of Kronos

Hell, we usually went to Atlas Hamburgers at 79th & Winchester.