[CincinnatiKid]

This was posted on Townshend's website in Jamuary 2002

[William McKinley]

I have to say, when I heard Townshend's claim that he was doing research, I dismissed it like a politician's claim that he took bribes merely as part of his own, secret sting operation. But taken in context with this piece, it is plausible.

I guess time will tell.

[New Horizon]

Hmmmm...perhaps his "excuse" is actually a valid one.

[new cruelty]

Why post it twice?

[NY.SS-Bar9]

You forgot the barf alert.

[marshmallow]

This puts Townshend's arrest in a new light. Like many, I assumed the worst and I'm now more than happy to give him the benefit of the doubt.

However, two things still trouble me about the case.

1)He gave these people his credit card number. No amount of dedication to research on my part would induce me to allow these people to make money off my "research". Not to mention the foolishness of giving your number to the human detritus who run these sites.

2)He has been changed with "conspiracy to distribute" or words to that effect. That goes way beyond just looking at this stuff or even downloading it. I'd like to know what's behind this charge.

[Tribune7]

This article is a pretty good defense. I hope he's telling the truth. Time will tell.

[TLBSHOW]

LLR

[Petronski]

I find this to be very credible.

[TLBSHOW]

Roger Daltrey, Townshend's bandmate from The Who, said he believed the guitarist was innocent.

"My gut instinct is that he is not a pedophile, and I know him better than most," he was quoted by The Sun tabloid as saying before Townshend's arrest. "Pete has perhaps been a little naive the way he has gone about it, but I believe his intentions are good."

"I'm very shocked and I hope it's not as bad as it sounds," Elton John said backstage at the American Music Awards presentation in Los Angeles Monday night. "I'm a friend of Pete's. I love Pete, and my thoughts are with him."

The model Jerry Hall, a Townshend friend, said Sunday he was an "avid supporter" of child welfare groups and had spoken at length about the dangers of child pornography on the Internet.

[TLBSHOW]

More news from England!

T Rex band member dies

Micky Finn, percussionist with glam rock group T Rex, has died at the age of 55.
A spokesman for the Mayday Hospital in Croydon, south London, said: "Michael Finn died on Saturday night at the Mayday Hospital."

His manager Barry Newby said Finn was believed to have died of kidney and liver problems, but the exact cause of death had not been announced yet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2651733.stm

Formed by flamboyant lead singer Marc Bolan in 1967, T Rex remain best know for hits such as

Get it On (bang a gong),

[Dr. Eckleburg]

While I sympathize with Townsend's scarred history, he appears to be "covering his arse."

[SerpentDove]

It doesn't matter what I think...

but I am disinclined to believe Peter Townshend's version of events.

[Revolting cat!]

Victim of child abuse, victim of the "alcoholism disease", victim this, victim that! Now, I know why I never liked Tommy while being a fan of the band. Petie oughta get over it, stop his "research" and start enjoying his wealth. What's this victim obsession? I went to a writer's group a couple of weeks ago and a couple of old broads were reading their weepy short pieces there - one about a street bum, sorry "a homeless person", and the other about a halfwit, sorry "a victim of something or other". I walked out, just as I couldn't finish reading the piece above. Is there all there is to life, victimhood? Petie was promising a new Who album a few weeks ago, he ought get off his arse and start working on that!

[Question_Assumptions]

This does sound plausible. A friend was looking for "haiku" information for her daughter, spelled it wrong, and wound up at a Japanese porn site. I've had a porn site come up accidentally after mistyping a URL. And (as I mentioned in another thread), I know of a guy who was looking at the Usenet one night at work that was so upset by what he stumbled upon that he beeped his manager in the middle of the night (I know the manager). The kind of thing described here can and does happen. And once you view those images, they may be stored on your hard drive. And as he said about "boys", some keywords do have "code word" meanings to the point that I've often taken to typing "-sex" (i.e., exclude pages with the word "sex" in them) into searches to prevent seeing sex sites. If you have a filter or AOL, you might not see them but if you don't and search for the wrong word, you sure can.

[TLBSHOW]

bump