John Lydon is an asshole

— 03.27.2017 01:36 PM

Many of you have sent me a story in which the Sex Pistols frontman expresses enthusiasm for Trump, Brexit and the racist UKIP.  To wit:

In an interview today with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Johnny Rotten said he supported Brexit and described Donald Trump as a “possible friend” while dismissing accusations that the president is racist. The Sex Pistols frontman told hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that Trump was a “complicated fellow.” “One journalist once said to me, ‘Is he the political Sex Pistol?’ In a way,” he said.

“What I dislike is the left wing media in America are trying to smear the bloke as a racist, and that’s completely not true,” he added. “There are many, many problems with him as a human being but he’s not that, and there just might be a chance something good will come out of this situation because it terrifies politicians. This is a joy to behold for me.”

When Morgan pointed out that Trump’s anti-establishment streak mirrored the Sex Pistols’ approach to music, Rotten replied: “Dare I say, [Trump could be] a possible friend.”

Rotten also described former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and his Brexit movement as “fantastic.”

“The working class have spoken and I’m one of them and I’m with them,” he said.

Does this shock me as much it has clearly shocked some of you? No, not me.

I’ve interviewed Rotten many times, and have long held the view that he is – truly – an asshole. And he’s always been pretty right-wing, too.

Read this, from my book Fury’s Hour:

It is twenty-five years since an emaciated, feral Johnny Rotten snarled that he was the anti-Christ on the Sex Pistols’ astonishing ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ …It seems almost impossible that Johnny Rotten and John Lydon are the same person.

To say that Johnny Rotten, former anti-Christ, has become John Lydon, utter hypocrite, would not go over well with his adoring audience this day.  But a hypocrite he is, without much doubt.  He sneers at the United States of America, calling it “the new Russia.”  But he lives there, and has for many years.  

He repeatedly pronounces that he is above politics, and insists that we need to “break down these barriers that we keep fucking putting between us” – and then he appears to mock black people, suggesting that their music comes from “the jungle.”  (On that single occasion, the audience goes silent.)  

And, later, at a Sex Pistols show in Toronto, as I looked on from the side of the stage:

I note that Rotten is looking down, squinting.  On the ground, between his microphone stand and a bank of monitors is a three-ring binder, filled with laminated pages – presumably to protect them from such phlegm assaults.  The binder contains Sex Pistols lyrics.

Binder or no binder, by the time the band gets around to ‘God Save the Queen,’ Johnny is forgetting the words a lot.  He looks intently at Matlock, perhaps for inspiration.  If Matlock notices, he gives no indication.  He keeps playing bass, bouncing back and forth to Rotten’s right.  A steaming geyser of human saliva is now cascading down on the stage and Johnny Rotten.  The place is slick with it.

Looking suddenly weary, Rotten carefully places his microphone stand near Cook’s drum kit.  Offstage, he is regarded with concern by his money manager Einbund, and Rambo, the bodyguard.  Rotten then addresses the crowd, some of whom are lunging at him to better place the next wad of gob.  Rotten is snarling:  “Canada, I hope you enjoy your fucking socialism because it is fucking you up the arse!”  He then stalks off the stage, shortly followed by Jones, Matlock and Cook.  Einbund scurries after him; so does Rambo, who scoops up the binder of lyrics along the way.  No one is quite sure what socialism has to do with anything, but one thing is clear: Johnny Rotten is livid.

Backstage (where I have been smuggled in by a friend), Rotten is handed a towel to wipe off the sweat and saliva.  His money manager and bodyguard flit around him, nodding sympathetically as he rails about the crowd.  The rest of the Sex Pistols regard him with unconcern, or not at all.

Sorry to go on at such length, but I wanted to document that Johnny Rotten has always been a crypto-racist (cf. his remark about blacks), and he has always been a conservative (cf. calling Canada “socialist”).

Bottom line: great band, great album. But Rotten was, is, and always will be an asshole.


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Bill Rompkey, RIP

— 03.27.2017 09:52 AM

I didn’t know he had passed away until I saw the item below in the Hill Times. Very sad to hear that – he was a great politician, and a great guy.  RIP, Bill.

Bill Rompkey, who spent almost 30 years as Liberal MP and then Senator, died last week at the age of 80. A CBC report indicated he had been battling cancer.

Mr. Rompkey was first elected as the Liberal MP for Grand Falls-White Bay-Lab- rador, N.L., in 1972 and held that seat, and the rejigged riding of Labrador, N.L., until being appointed to the Senate by prime minister Jean Chrétien in 1995. He served in the Senate until 2011.

Among the key roles Mr. Rompkey had as a politician was as National Revenue minister from 1980 to 1982 in prime min- ister Pierre Trudeau’s government, and he was the deputy government leader in the Senate from 2004 to 2006.


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SAY NO TO HATE

— 03.26.2017 07:43 PM

Oppose the neo-Nazi rag, Your Ward News? Opposed Canada post delivering I hate sheet to your mailbox? Now’s your chance to say so! Write this committee! Say NO to hate! 


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The Great Dealmaker gets dealt

— 03.26.2017 10:06 AM

Dowd. End is odd. But main point is assuredly true: DC has figured out the Unpresident, and they are playing him like a  proverbial fiddle. 

He’s the kind of guy who likes to say a sucker is born every minute. What he doesn’t say, and doesn’t know, is he’s one of them. 


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Spies Are Us: this week’s HuffPo #BCpoli column 

— 03.24.2017 11:40 AM

Some people wear tinfoil hats. Some see conspiracies everywhere. Some even look around at public meetings, and see spies where there are none.

B.C. NDP MLA David Eby, for instance, sees spies. B.C. Liberal spies, to be precise.

A little while ago, Eby — who seems like a nice fellow, albeit a bit paranoid — was at a meeting in Richmond, B.C. A few young folks had gathered to talk about housing, which is the subject matter of Eby’s critic role in the B.C. legislature.

A B.C. Liberal caucus researcher was there, too. She wasn’t trespassing or anything — it was a public gathering in a public place, one that had been promoted on Facebook and whatnot. The researcher recorded some of the proceedings, as researchers — and reporters, and NDP staffers everywhere — are wont to do.

Eby, however, went completely bananas about it. Later on, Eby — who (historians will note) is the guitarist for a band called World of Science, for which (the band says) he writes “sad bastard lyrics” — spared no adjective to describe the wicked, immoral and frankly Satanic presence of the young B.C. Liberal person.

It was “appalling,” he said. It was “reprehensible.” It was “a violation of the privacy rights of youth.” And so on and so on. World of Science’s sad bastard lyricist probably would have called it a war crime if he could have gotten away with it.

Except, David, it isn’t. It wasn’t. Sending staffers to the other side’s public events, in fact, has been going on since Jesus was a little feller, and you know it.

In every election campaign since time immemorial, in fact, political operatives have been quietly doing what that young B.C. Liberal researcher did. Intent on witnessing an opponent’s misstep, they are ever more showing up to capture mistakes made when the mainstream news media aren’t present. Like Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth did with the Republican golden boy, George Allen.

George Allen’s sad tale goes back to 2006, when he was seeking re-election to the Senate as the Republican standard-bearer. Allen was widely seen as a future possible presidential candidate, and he assiduously sought the support of so-called cultural conservatives — that is, those folks who want to preserve “one culture for one nation.” They’re not fussy about foreigners, particularly foreigners who don’t look like them. Allen was their (white, Christian) man.

One young man who didn’t look like Allen, but knew a great deal about him, was Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth. At the time, Sidarth — who also answered to Sid — was a straight-A senior at the University of Virginia and a Hindu. He was Virginia born and raised. Though he was studying engineering, politics was what interested him the most. He’d volunteered on a few Democratic campaigns, and by 2006 he was devoting himself to Democrat James Webb’s Senate battle.

His role was to be what I call a “road warrior”: following around the Repubican standard-bearer with a camcorder, basically. He’d capture misstatements or mistakes, and then relay them back to the central campaign in Arlington. This went on for a few weeks, and while Allen’s people didn’t particularly like Sidarth following them around — like David Eby doesn’t like to be followed around, apparently — they didn’t do anything to stop him, and mostly treated him courteously.

Until one Friday afternoon event in a park near the Kentucky border, that is. At that event, Allen did something he hadn’t done before: he singled Sidarth out. He pointed at him. “This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca or whatever his name is, he’s with my opponent,” said Allen. “So welcome, let’s give a welcome to macaca here! Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!”

The crowd cheered, even though some of them knew, or suspected, that George Allen had just used a disgusting slur. “Macaca” means “monkey,” and it has also been infamously used to describe African immigrants. Sidarth, who knew what the word meant, was shocked. On the resulting footage, you could see that his hand was shaking.

They’re not only allowed to be there. They’re helping democracy, too.
As with most such things in politics these days, the clip of Allen calling Sidarth a dark-skinned “monkey” eventually ended up on YouTube. Sidarth didn’t upload it himself, but he wasn’t upset about what would happen next. “This event,” he said, “reflected on Allen’s character.”

It indisputably did, and it would also indisputably end Allen’s political career. A Washington Post reporter wrote a short item about the “macaca” statement, and — within hours — the story went super-nova. Very soon, many other stories were written, alleging yet more bigoted statements or behaviour by Webb.

The conservative Great White Hope denied it all, of course, but he started to lose his double-digit lead in the polls and he never regained his footing. In November 2006, Allen lost to Webb by nearly 10,000 votes, his once-unstoppable multimillion-dollar campaign effectively felled by a quiet young man with a camcorder. Even in the old Confederate-era stronghold of Dickenson County, where Allen had made his racist remark. Even there.

Moral of the story, David Eby? Those quiet, polite young people showing up to public events and recording public statements by public figures? They’re not only allowed to be there.

They’re helping democracy, too. Ask Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth if you don’t believe me.


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