Re: red herrings, pink salmon & rainbow trout

At 01:36 AM 6/21/96 -0400, you wrote:

>And now for 20 points ...

     I'll be content with 15:

>... explain why or why not the Universal Chord 
>is a representation of Nietzsche's Obermensch ...

     Nope -- Nietzsche would recoil from the notion
that the free-willed Ubermensch could be summarized
- -- in effect, predicted -- by the single snapshot
captured in the Universal Chord. Townshend's vision
was and is inherently impossible to achieve, because
it does not account for time unless the Chord is
struck at the moment of death.     

>... as well as explaining if Townshend's message is 
>lessened by the overtly capitalist nature of the 
>medium through which it was meant to be expressed.

     Again, no, because the nature and result of the
expression would subvert the capitalist structure of
the medium that produced it. In that way, the message
could be analogized to the romantic fantasy of classic
Marx/Lenin theories of revolution. It might be possible
to argue, however, that Townshend's later visions of
Lifehouse simply abandoned the message instead of 
merely "lessened."

     So the real moral of the story is ... be careful
what you ask -- someone may venture an answer ... :-}
Bad defeats Good then self-destructs ...