Sunday 29 April 2012

1977 And All That

A double-page spread in The Observer about the Sex Pistols doing something or other on some boat on the Thames. How many people were involved in that, or ever even so much as bought a Sex Pistols record? And how many people took part in the Silver Jubilee?

Yet, despite the hilarious fact that the former Johnny Rotten now advertises butter on television dressed up as the country squire that he quite possibly now is, the insistence remains relentless that the Sex Pistols were the main event while the Silver Jubilee was a sideshow.

It is part of a much wider, and profoundly pernicious, trend. For example, there has never been a generation in which illegal drug use has been normal. Yet we are now onto at least the third in which that small criminal minority is accorded the unchallenged right to speak on behalf of everyone else.

9 comments:

  1. When is the "book" of "reviews" of your "book" coming out? What's that you say? You're a fantasist who everyone laughs at? You don't say.

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  2. No, I certainly don't, luv...

    Slowly, but surely, you people's cultural and political tyranny is coming to an end. And you know it.

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  3. Too right. The editor of that is younger again. As his call for papers put it, you and your work are "generation-defining".

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  4. Yes! Yes! Yes! At last someone saying what everyone else thinks, that public life is conducted as if it were sixth form social politics. We are all expected to prostrate ourselves to the cool kids, whether it's the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll boys and their girlfriends or the football team and their girlfriends. Thank God, we now have a grown up to take them on. Are you standing for Parliament in 2015? If not, why not?

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  5. The Silver Jubilee was under a Labour government.

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  6. Indeed it was. Headed by a Labour Prime Minister who had previously been by far the most anti-drugs Home Secretary since the issue really arose.

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  7. The straight answer @22:29 is, "in the autumn, not that it is any of your business until then."

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  8. You will pretend not to know this, but its reception among the people who matter is not being done any harm by your status as the arch-enemy of the universally hated and despised Damian Thompson.

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