Goodbye To All That


The lice were animatronic and waved legs and feelers. Animatronic pubic lice and knighthoods to rock singers sum up one aspect of the Blair Government's cultural legacy pretty well.

That's the conclusion to a piece by Hal G. P. Colebatch over at The American Spectator (which seems strangely invested in ye olde Englande's aristocratic traditions for a U.S. mag started in Indiana).

Colebatch has got his knickers in a twist over Bono from U2–and even worse, a citizen of the Republic of Ireland–being given a knighthood by Bush poodle Tony Blair. Feel the anger of a man who despises the "proletarianization" of the Sceptred Isle and who "has lectured in International Law and International Relations at Notre Dame University and Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and worked on the staff of two Australian Federal Ministers":

To make it plain that knighthoods, or other honors, are regarded as really meaning nothing is to admit that the whole Marxist-deconstructionist mindset is correct and there is no objective value of worthiness to be recognized and honored, only baubles to be used for cynical political advantage, or to be deliberately abused in order to distress and demoralize class or political enemies. It is, in a queer way, part of the social totalitarianism that has never been far below the surface in Blair's Britain.

Whole thing, well worth slogging through for the animatronic pubic lice punchline, here.

I'll grant Colebatch his discontent but he's got it all wrong. Giving knighthood to rock stars isn't an insult to English traditions. As I argued in the wake of Dee Dee Ramone's death, it's killing rock and roll.