What’s with so many former MTV VJs being stealth conservatives? I just can’t process this nonsense, honestly.
Who said that selling rock music for a profit or being “alternative” equaled progressive?
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Well I know for sure in the punk scene she would’ve been kicked out for her crap. I have no idea how the alt rock scene was or is in regards to that.
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Sadly, yes. She’s been out for years noting that she was the lone College Republican type at MTV, and went from reasonably conservative to batshit over the years.
She fits into the same bucket (although not AS terrible) as Milo for the “look, we have diversity too!” defense.
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Not all punks, actually:
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Now that’s gotta be a genuine ‘no true Scotsman’ right there.
Supporting Dubya is about as un-punk as you can get.
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But there have always been apolitical, right-leaning or conservative punks - and plenty who rejected politics entirely. Punk wasn’t necessarily a political movement, except where it dealt with the production of music, even if many people used punk as a space of political organizing. That’s why early on you had fights between punks, because it never had a coherent political philosophy (in terms of left and right politics). Zines were always full of debates on whether or not punk was left wing or even political at all. But it was happening between self-identified punks.
You might not find being pro-Bush very punk (and I’d totally agree with you), but that doesn’t mean that self-identifying punks all agree with us.
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As a whole it’s anti-punk to be for anyone in authority. If you’re a like of Trump, Obama, Bush, etc you’re not punk. It doesn’t work. It’s like saying I’m a beatnik but I like Ike. Or saying you’re a vegan but eat burgers on Tuesday. It’s an all in or all out affair since these things are marked by their origin. For punk, it originates in the working class which is antithetical to those who hold power (the rich, the politically connected, etc). Any attempt to make them blended with their antithesis makes them meaningless. It’s by this blending that authoritarians gain the upper hand against any sub-culture which seeks to be apart from them even if it’s a superficial kind of separation.
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And that’s up for interpretation. Some see the conservative, anti-state position as being punk. You and I (and @kimmo) might well disagree in that particular interpretation, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t punks making that distinction.
Except for all those places it was not a working class movement at all.
You don’t get to define a while subculture for everyone in it, I’m afraid. I don’t disagree with you personally, but to imagine that all punks everywhere were working class and leftist is just ahistorical.
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I’d love to get Jello’s take on these “punks”.
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What about the rest of DK?
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He’s the most outspoken. Always has been.
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Sure, but as he himself has said, question everything, even him. Does he get to define punk for millions of people around the world?
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Jello and Henry Rollins (my own go-to guy for principled representatives of punk) endorsed Bernie Sanders, and combined with other statements they’ve made over the decades I doubt they take any more positive view of conservative and right-wing punks than the artist who did this:
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But again, those aren’t all punks. They are some punks. I still maintain that punk is less about staking out a political position and more about music production.
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Where did I claim they were all punks? I’m claiming they’re punks I respect. I do agree that the music comes first, but they’re not apolitical and the most prominent punk musicians do tend to lean away from the GOP establishment (Johnny Ramone being the sore-thumb exception).
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No group is monolith; it always comes back to intersectionality.
Getting back on topic, I think it’s safe to say ‘Kennedy’ was always about the money, and never the music.
Hell, by her time Mtv had already sold out completely and was barely even playing music vids anymore.
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It’s an interesting conversation. You’re correct about the general approach to politics by punk artists (I believe this is your academic speciality). Some of us are just honing in on that and looking at the positions of prominent ones, without claiming that they’re spokespeople for what is far from a monolithic movement.
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I’d be interested in a separate post on the history of punk and it’s many different flavors; I don’t even know who ‘Jello’ is…
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