IIIIIII WANT TO BEEEEEEEE....a registered Democrat...

We have the new version of Rock the Vote, untainted by any connection with MTV and their filthy corporate-rock agenda, man. Yup, Punk Voter has risen from the ashes of Fat Mike's righteous fury at the 200 election and is determined to get spike-heads to the ballot box.


There's absolutely nothing new about this. I only blog it to remark on the remarkable orthodoxy of the musicianly class. NoFX used to make a name for itself as rejectors of PC dogma (witness the cover of their 1993 album). But when it's time to actually make politics, they're the DNC in a Mowhawk. And when you boil down the badass poses, you've got nothing that Daschle hasn't said a million times before: blah blah the war on terror is "a little crazy" blah blah George Bush is dangerous blah blah the world is against us blah blah only stupid people vote Republican.


In the split between "artie" punks and "social realist" punks that started in 1978 when the Sex Pistols broke up, the working class social realists won, and they became the definers of what punk looked like, sounded like, and thought (all horse declamations to the contrary notwitshtanding, I know my tribe, and there are a whole list of things that are "not punk"). To wit: Punk looks like spikey hair and leather jackets, sounds like Fun House in countless variations, and believes what the socialists tell it to believe. Punks who read anything other than fanzines read Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and mounds of post-Marxist critiques of the free market. This is not done to actually overthrow the capitalist system, but to make a great show of independence of it, and to pronounce the Good News until the Day of Liberation. Beyond that, there hasn't been a new idea in the movement for decades. Punks are the Teddy Boys of the Left.


Or so it might seem. Conservative Punk says otherwise. The layout's similar, as is the tone. But I'll bet money that the age group skews older. What they need is some bands. We'll just have to see who's got the numbers.