More bands that should be sent to Russia for trial

I wish to extend my list of bands which need to be sent to Russia for trial:

• Rush (for sheer pretentiousness)
• Madonna (give her twice the time as the others)
• Metallica (almost as pretentious as Rush)
• The Doors (we'll have to resurrect Jim Morrison for this, which will really screw up things for the people who visit his grave every year, but we can consider that an extra, added benefit. They need to get a life anyway)
• Prince (add two extra years for every time he's changed his name)
• ACDC (for being in league with the Devil)
• Pearl Jam (for spawning grunge rock)
• Nirvana (for fooling an entire generation into thinking they were actually good)
• Journey (for sheer mediocrity)
• Motley Crue (for just being Motley Crue)
• Coldplay (for continuing to write the same song over and over again)
• Green Day (who write great guitar hooks but whose lyrics are completely nihilistic and who suffer from generally bad hair)
• Every rap and hip-hop band that has ever existed. Ever.

These are mostly older bands, of course, but the most of the bands on Billboard's Top 100 I have never heard of. But, given the generally bad musical taste these days, they cannot possibly be good.

Send them all.

I have changed my position on ***** Riot

I have now seen a video of the "mock concert" given by ***** Riot in the Orthodox church that has become a cause célèbre among culturally fashionable people worldwide, and my views about the band and the verdict have now totally changed.

In my previous post, I came out in favor of putting the band behind bars for two years for desecrating a holy place. But I have changed my mind.

Having seen the actual performance, I now I think the band should serve more time.

In addition to desecrating a holy place, the video makes it clear that they also constitute an artistic menace to which a stop should be put immediately (the lengths I go to to avoid ending my sentences with prepositions. Sheeez.).

Where were the freedom-loving liberals when we needed them?

The liberals can now add their condemnation of the guilty verdict of the punk band ***** Riot to all their other fashionable cultural causes, like animal rights and the Free Tibet movement. It's all part of the low cost pose they can strike that allows them to look like they are fighting for something when, in fact, they are not incurring any discomfort at all.

At least the left-wing European intellectuals in the 1930's who went to fight for the communists in the Spanish Civil War actually risked something. Today, fighting the good fight is characterized by Madonna preening on stage by telling her audience she "stands with" a punk band that is just trying to get its name in the news; or members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers wearing a T-shirt supporting the band while playing in Moscow; or Paul McCartney writing a letter in support (proving thereby that at least the old rockers were actually literate).

And, of course, we have the oh, so fashionable Obama administration weighing in with its condemnation of the verdict.

And so where were the liberal celebrities and politicians during the Soviet years when people were thrown in jail after being found guilty in trials the verdicts for which were announced before the trials ever took place? Hmmm. Let's see. I'll just check the historical record here and see if ... Omigosh. The liberal celebrities weren't concerned about dissidents during the Cold War at all! In fact, they were supportive of the Soviet government and other totalitarian governments around the world who were jailing their own citizens on a daily basis for disagreeing with them.

Funny how that works.

And did I mention that the Red Hot Chili Peppers should be sent to Russia with the punk bands for trial?

Sending punk bands to Russia

According to the Atlantic Wire, the Russian punk band--whose name we will adorn with asterisks because we actually have standards on this blog--was just given a 2-year jail sentence for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." The band ***** Riot was arrested on March 15 after performing a 40-minute "mock concert" (whatever that means) inside a Russian Orthodox church.

Now, at first I was tempted by all of the fawning coverage by the international media to support the band against the Russian legal system, which has been known to announce, on occasion, the verdict of trials before they actually occur. But I'll have to say that I am quite enamored of this particular verdict and impressed by the thought of how we could use it on "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" here in the United States.

I'm thinking of possible applications of it even now.

But perhaps it would be better to simply ship all the punk bands we have here in the United States to Russia in the hope that they too would be put out of commission for a couple of years.

After all, these bands go around posing as if they're really dangerous and edgy. They're constantly announcing in pretentious tones how their listeners should defy all convention and stick it to the establishment, and pretend as if their calls for cultural revolution are some kind of courageous public stance. So put 'em in jail for a little while.

This would have the advantage of increasing the authenticity of their whole act, and no one would accuse them of being the posers they really are.