How spectacularly ironic that James Brown died in the wee hours of Christmas morning. There was never anything remotely pious about him. He broke every rule he could find and when those were exhausted he made up some new rules of his own to break.

He spent some time in reform school, some time in jail, and most of the rest of his life barely outside the clutches of some arm of the law. He was an uppity black man way before it was popular, or even safe. He didn't seem to care. His entire career was an upraised finger to white bread America. Dance steps for free. We danced to his music, too, in our fashion, but it was always just there below the surface that we're black and you're not. You'd probably have to be my age or older to know how revolutionary and inflammatory that was. "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud", he sang. In later life he claimed that song was responsible for the change in cuutural vocabulary from "colored" to "black." He may have overreached there but he was in the frame, that's for sure. He was an American original.