[no subject]

A whole generation fooled by guitarist Townshend!  
 

By LES HORTON

I really hope that veteran Who guitarist Pete
Townshend is innocent of allegations that he has been
trawling the Internet in pursuit of child pornography.

My reasons are partly moral, in that I hope he is not
part of such a seedy trade, but also selfish, for this
is a hero in whom I put my trust as a teenager.

My Generation and Won't Get Fooled Again were anthems
for an army of teenagers, convinced that our world
would be free of the physical and moral pollution for
which we held our elders responsible.

War, violence and exploitation - of which child
pornography is one of the worst forms - were to be
banished in our "one world" Utopia. 

While our parents saw immorality in our free living,
we saw the same sin in their hypocrisy. 

We may not have achieved Utopia but the dream, or at
least the memory of it, has lived on in the music of
our day and it is deeply saddening to think that one
of its leading lights may have become nothing but a
rich, dirty old man, salivating over pornographic
images of children.

The star-laden world of film, stage and music has long
been riddled with scandal and while the public will
pass off much of it as the eccentricity of people in
the unreal world of entertainment, the molestation of
children has always been beyond the pale.

I have often wondered whether the very rich who fall
prey to perversity of one form or another do so
because it was within them all along, or if they are
corrupted by their wealth, in a world in which money
can buy almost literally anything, or anybody, from a
politician's loyalty to a child's innocence.

Townshend has yet to be formally charged, but he has
already admitted paying to enter the cyber world of
child porn, ostensibly for research.

Whatever the whole truth turns out to be, he is
irreparably tarnished in my mind and I shall never
feel quite the same about him or his music.

It looks like me and my generation did get fooled
after all!


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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