Pete Townshend, Neocon?
Who guitarist claims to favor U.S. militarism
If asked "Who are you?," rocker Pete Townshend might reply, in part, "A neoconservative."
The Who guitarist revealed that he is "a bit of a neocon" during an interview with ABC News. Townshend and Roger Daltrey sat down with ABC to talk about their work for teens with cancer with the Who Cares campaign, and Townshend wasn't afraid to delve into the subject of politics.
“I try and stay away from American politics because I’m a bit of a neocon," Townshend, a British citizen, told ABC. "I’m not that popular with everybody.” Adding, "I like the idea of America as the world's police force. Then we don't have to do it. You guys sort it out."
A "neoconservative" is officially defined as "a conservative who advocates the assertive promotion of democracy and United States national interest in international affairs including through military means," according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It is also "a formal liberal espousing conservatism."
Townshend, who thought Mitt Romney would beat "tired" Barack Obama, said he was never very politically inclined growing up until he found music. "When I found music, and I found a new way to speak and to express myself to particularly those young teenagers that we entertained when we started out, that became my politics--the politics of the spirit, the politics of the heart, the politics of the soul," he told ABC.
In 2004, Townshend refused to let liberal filmmaker Michael Moore use "Won't Get Fooled Again" in his documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," the Guardian previously reported.
"When first approached I knew nothing about the content of his film 'Fahrenheit 9/11,'" Townshend wrote on his website at the time. "I had not really been convinced by Bowling for Columbine [Moore's previous film] and had been worried about its accuracy. Once I had an idea what the film was about, I was 90% certain my song was not right for them."
Townshend, who was arrested in 2003 on suspicion of possessing child pornography, has been disclosing personal details about his life recently. He discusses his childhood -- which he believes included sexual abuse -- substance abuse, infidelity, and the trials and tribulations of the band in his memoir, "Who I Am."
Just to delineate between things that get said and things that get reported, it wasn't that Townshend said "tired Obama"; it was that he said this:
"I thought he [Romney] was throwing the money in such buckets and I thought Obama looked, looked tired,” Townshend said.
"I am a genius, not was, am."
How interesting. Once a GOD to music critics and fans, all of a sudden Townshend is a whack job and his status as a genius is somehow different now than it was before his statement.
The reaction says far more about the deadly (for WE THE PEOPLE) lock-step psychosis of the progressive left than it does about Townshend. Saul Alinsky is alive and well. Unfortunately, for lovers of freedom at least. For those with their hands out and for those in power ladeling out the fruits of other's labors to the unwilling or incapable, what happens when you run out of other's people's money?
Townshend's remarks about being a Neocon make about as much sense as saying that he was just doing "research" when he was caught looking at child pornography on the internet - a claim, by the way, that many pedophiles have used when caught red-handed with child porn. Of course, Townshend's millions got him out of it. At the time he said he was doing "research" for a possible new rock opera; now he says it was for his childhood autobiography because he believes he MAY have been molested as a child. Most victims of such abuse know quite well whether they were abused or not, and most don't grow up to abuse children themselves, or to look at child porn on the internet. He also claims to be an advocate of child welfare groups, a claim that - rightly or wrongly - raises suspicions in a post-Sandusky society.
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