Morrissey hasn’t turned right: our establishment has turned insane

The Spectator ^ | 2 June 2019 | Charley Nash

[Rummyfan]

On Thursday, May 30, Morrissey was ‘canceled’. According to the Guardian, a British newspaper fond of such decrees, fans now feel ‘betrayed’ by the singer’s recent controversial and provocative statements, which have included support for Anne Marie Waters’s nationalist For Britain party.

‘Morissey [sic], what happened?’ the Guardian agonized on Twitter. But maybe they already know the answer. In just a decade, political correctness has obtained a stranglehold on Western culture. The provocateurs and counter-cultural icons of the late 20th century have been replaced by commercially compromised ‘influencers’, and artists who are carefully selected by social censors.

...

Morrissey is — thankfully — still alive. But that also means the working-class autodidact from Manchester must face the heat from a metropolitan nanny culture, despite the fact that he moved all the way to the States in part to avoid London’s notoriously venomous press.

Anyone who considers Morrissey’s multi-decade career can see that he hasn’t changed. Whether it was his war against meat, his ambiguous sexuality, or wearing a For Britain pin badge on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Morrissey has never stopped being a provocateur.

It was England, and the West in general, that changed. Today, nations once bastions of free speech and liberalism bear closer resemblance to Middle Eastern dictatorships, with the general public’s livelihood and social status depending on a carefully held tongue and the ‘right’ political opinions.

[LRoggy]

A fantastic song. I’m kind of stuck in the 60’s/70’s but this song would always make my play list.

[Lovely-Day-For-A-Guinness]

I guess he knows how Joan of Arc felt now.

And as true today as it was when penned over thirty years ago:

Panic on the streets of London
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again?

[dead]

Scolding fascists, too wimpy to actually shoot anybody, they try to kill you on social media.

[VietVet876]

Damn. It’s just after 8 A.M. here at work and now I want to play hooky and go home and plug in my guitar. And the real $64,000 question is “reverb or tremelo?”.