Punk Congress

On December 1, an incident took place that sealed punk rock's notorious reputation: On Thames Today, an early evening London TV show, Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones was goaded into a verbal altercation by the host, Bill Grundy. Jones called Grundy a "dirty fucker" on live television, triggering a media controversy. Two days later, the Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, and The Heartbreakers set out on the Anarchy Tour, a series of gigs throughout the UK. Many of the shows were cancelled by venue owners in response to the media outrage following the Grundy confrontation.

There seems to be some surreal juxtaposition in play when something like punk rock, a voice of angst and rebellion and anti-authority, can be completely derailed by something like saying swear words on tv (in a shirt with naked titties on it, no less), yet it appears that the single best thing to make yourself rich in American politics today is to "show your ass."

Shit like the Grundy interview followed punk around til it wore it down to it's nubs; stopping, for instance,  Ramones albums in their tracks due to radio being scared to play them because some band across the ocean had shown bad behavior. You'd think a punk band telling some old geezer to fuck off would be the exact right thing to do for their career, but it played a part in killing it (and others) instead. Meanwhile someone like Joe Wilson, while in the very chamber of decorum, acts like a complete ass on national tv and $1.8M flies into his office within a week. Wouldn't you think the opposite to be true? In each of these cases? What the fuck?

Obviously we can list all sorts of reasons if we think it through: different time, different place, the people sending money to Wilson may think they're helping themselves, etc etc. But at a gut level, it's remarkably odd how these two things line up in the mirror. Whack.