Stop Helping God across the Road Like a Little Old Lady

[skelter]

disclaimer: take your bashings of Stand-up Comedy to threads in "The Music" from 2009, please

First off, one of the most vivid, original and humorous lines off the album. Also a favorite of mine.

Despite having a very literal imagery (as opposed to other NLOTH gems that are more abstract and poetic--"Head first, then foot, then heart set sail"), I find this line very complex and I still don't know how to read it, entirely.

We all know to treat our elders with respect. Filial piety and all. If there's a little old lady who looks like she needs help crossing the road, the honorable Scouts thing to do is to help them cross. Is this how we treat God? In my personal relationship with God, I've come to realize that I need him more than he'll ever need my soul, so yes, Skelter, "Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady"

This line has so much allowance for religion and spirituality. Your thoughts?

[Droo]

I take it as more cynical and political in nature. I interpret it as aimed at religious conservatives who feel the need to lobby for laws to follow religious principles. By being so defensive of religion, they are treating it like an elderly person needing help or saving.

I personally interpret Stand Up Comedy as a possible pro-gay anthem. Then again, I could just be reading what I want it to be about into it.

[Bundang Dave]

I take it as more cynical and political in nature. I interpret it as aimed at religious conservatives who feel the need to lobby for laws to follow religious principles. By being so defensive of religion, they are treating it like an elderly person needing help or saving.

I personally interpret Stand Up Comedy as a possible pro-gay anthem. Then again, I could just be reading what I want it to be about into it.

I always thought it was Bono admonishing himself for spreading religion unnecessarily, but I like your interpretation too.

It's an interesting line. I wish there were more like it in that song.

[Droo]

The whole "stand up for your love" line, along with "love is evolution's very best day" and "the wire is stretched in between our two towers" thing all combines together to make me inclined to personally treat it as a gay anthem.

[tigerfan41]

I don't really interpret the song as being anti-religion at all, personally. NLOTH as a whole seems to have an underlying message of spirituality, at least lyrically speaking.

I think the line refers to people feeling the need to protect/defend their belief in God, and how it's silly to do that because you're "treating God" like a "little old lady" who needs help. Perhaps Bono is referring to the radical religious people who shove religion down others throats? Maybe he's making the point that religion should be a personal thing?

As for the the God is Love, Love is Evolution's Very Best Day lyric, again, I think it's less an anti-religion message and more of a "you should love others because God is love."

[wraitii]

Yeah, I kind of agree... I feel like the message is "Science is okay, don't mistake God for it, but don't forget him either, for god is love".

[Fist-O]

I kind of think that it applies to those religious people who debate a lot with each other and in the process forget that God is love.

[The Exile]

Funny, but I always read it as, "Stop helping, God! Cross the road, like, a little, old lady."

Surprised no one else has seen it....

[whitecanvasshoes]

I've thought along the same lines as some of you, but just a little different. I've always seen this line as being about the narrator underestimating the power of God, or love-however you want to think of it. He thinks God is vulnerable, small, and limited in what he can/has/will do, so he goes about doing things himself thinking he needs to help God out.
 
The lines that come before this one talk about the narrator being able to stand up for hope, faith, and love. The next lines imply that the narrator has confidence (certainty) in his own ability to stand up for these things because as he said earlier, the DNA lotto left him smart, but that in doing it by himself, he is "helping God across the road." He wants to "get over" certainty-his own sureness in his abilities and capabilities-and turn it over to God to see what he can do. It seems that he wants to let go of his attempts to be in control (MOS), and let God do more. He should let God help him across the road like a little old lady, not the other way around.
 
It also seems connected to the album in general in the sense that sometimes some people who place limits on what love can do become pesimisstic and despair about the future. The whole album seems to be divided between narrators who have had this attitude and narrators who believe in everything love/God can do. This limiting, despairing attitude seems to be shared (though they may be at the moment of change) by the narrators of MOS, UC, WAS, COL, NLOTH, while the narrators of Magnificent, Breathe, SUC, GOYB, IGCIIDGCT, and the girl in NLOTH are trying to tell them to fight against that attitude. FEZ might be someone who is in between these two. In fact it seems on some of the songs that the verses are the person with lack of hope and love, and the chorus is a response to that.
 

[skelter]

Funny, but I always read it as, "Stop helping, God! Cross the road, like, a little, old lady."

Surprised no one else has seen it....

This is effing hilarious. The way Bono sings Stand Up Comedy, I'd buy that

[skelter]

I've thought along the same lines as some of you, but just a little different. I've always seen this line as being about the narrator underestimating the power of God, or love-however you want to think of it. He thinks God is vulnerable, small, and limited in what he can/has/will do, so he goes about doing things himself thinking he needs to help God out.
 
The lines that come before this one talk about the narrator being able to stand up for hope, faith, and love. The next lines imply that the narrator has confidence (certainty) in his own ability to stand up for these things because as he said earlier, the DNA lotto left him smart, but that in doing it by himself, he is "helping God across the road." He wants to "get over" certainty-his own sureness in his abilities and capabilities-and turn it over to God to see what he can do. It seems that he wants to let go of his attempts to be in control (MOS), and let God do more. He should let God help him across the road like a little old lady, not the other way around.
 
It also seems connected to the album in general in the sense that sometimes some people who place limits on what love can do become pesimisstic and despair about the future. The whole album seems to be divided between narrators who have had this attitude and narrators who believe in everything love/God can do. This limiting, despairing attitude seems to be shared (though they may be at the moment of change) by the narrators of MOS, UC, WAS, COL, NLOTH, while the narrators of Magnificent, Breathe, SUC, GOYB, IGCIIDGCT, and the girl in NLOTH are trying to tell them to fight against that attitude. FEZ might be someone who is in between these two. In fact it seems on some of the songs that the verses are the person with lack of hope and love, and the chorus is a response to that.

Wow, this is insightful. I never thought of each song having a different narrator's voice (except for COL, which is the obvious one with the journalist mindset), but now that you mentioned it, I have read other opinions of NLOTH saying that Bono is taking on different POVs/personas in the songs. I think this is what makes NLOTH so mediative and mature/ past full circle of U2. They have evolved past the days of singing from a rock star (or rock musician--before they were stars in the earlier days) pov, compared to even HTDAAB's All Because of You (generic rock anthem from a Bonoesque perspective  )

(but then again, i'm not too familiar with the earlier albums so idk)

[whitecanvasshoes]

I will admit some of the POVs/narrators are pretty Bonoesque still.  I don't think SUC is too far from Bono, but as an Engligh major you get in trouble when you assume the narrator is the author. 

[skelter]

Deffo. SUC's "small men with big ideas" is definitely Bono being Bono.

So is IGC's "the right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear".

On the other hand, MoS's "speeding on the subway..." is not too rock star like, neither is UC's "I had driven to the scene of the accident" 

[Chip]

I will admit some of the POVs/narrators are pretty Bonoesque still.  I don't think SUC is too far from Bono, but as an Engligh major you get in trouble when you assume the narrator is the author. 

As another former English major (I graduated a long time back), I agree with you, but here we don't have to do too much assuming. Both the band (in interviews around the time of NLOTH's release) and Anton Corbijn (in his liner notes for Linear) actually said that NLOTH was experimental in the sense that originally every song was written from the perspective of characters Bono had created, and this was the first time that Bono had done so for every song on an album. But both Bono and Corbijn also noted that between the completion of the then-considered-finished album in the spring of 2008 and the actual completion of the album in December 2008, Bono had thrown in lyrics directly relating to himself, thereby effectively jettisoning the original concept. Since IGCIIDGCT was not on the spring 2008 album and was the last song written for NLOTH, it's not surprising that it's autobiographical. And since SUC was on the spring 2008 album but was revised later (the band only finalized it in December, and it was the hardest song for them to finish), it's not unreasonable to conclude that many of the song's lyrics are Bono-centered.

Here's the way that I read the song:

*The first verse seems to retain at least some of Bono's original character-focused lyrics. Probably the same couple from "Magnificent" is in view here, although the "wire" imagery may point to the couple from MOS. In any case, we have a couple living amidst tensions.

*The second verse may point toward the original couple, at least in part (see the "certainty" reference and think of MOS -- maybe the MOS couple is more likely than the "Magnificent" couple after all), but I lean toward mostly or even entirely Bono. Notice that the "you" seems to become more general here, with Bono arguably addressing the listener ("the DNA lotto may have left you smart") in a manner similar to what we see in the chorus.

* The third verse is entirely Bono as the speaker. It's full of his trademark witticisms and self-effacements.

*The chorus, with its generic "ye people" that seems to have been made for a live setting, is most likely also a post-spring 2008 revision.

*The (first?) bridge ("God is love . . .") could be from either time period, while the "Soul-rockin' people" section (second bridge?) is so direct (very possibly a band reference) that it's probably a later addition/revision. 

[Chip]

More general thoughts on the ideas in SUC:

The (first?) bridge ("God is love . . .") is the key to understanding most of the rest of the song, as here we have love defined. (Okay, we already know that "love" is Bono's favorite synonym for God, but the average listener does not.) And far from advocating that religion be personal, Bono calls upon listeners to "stand up, then sit down for your love" in a direct way that arguably has not been seen since October -- although, knowing Bono, that devotion should be at least as much by actions as by words, and involves loving people as much as God per se.

As for "stop helping God across the road like a little old lady," I think that Bono's being self-deprecating regarding his activism, admonishing himself not to be deceived into thinking that God actually needs Bono's help.

Overall, I love the song because it is so self-deprecating; Bono comes across as a court jester in God's court. The title is also self-deprecating.