Like a lot of people out there, I’m going to miss the magnificent weirdo that was David Bowie. While the rest of us listen to our favorite Bowie songs on repeat, the not-so-good folks at Infowars — conspiracy theory central — are actually celebrating the musician and cultural icon’s death.
In a post titled DAVID BOWIE: A NON-APPRECIATION, Darrell Y. Hamamoto suggests that Bowie, who died of cancer, was himself a symptom of “civilizational cancer.”
After several paragraphs of mostly incoherent throat-clearing, which sort of suggest (among other things) that Bowie was responsible not only for Gary Glitter’s fashion sense but also his sexual abuse and exploitation of children, Hamamoto presents us with his thesis, declaring that Bowie’s
death is the capstone on the pyramid of necrotic Anglo-American mass culture spanning a half-century of civilizational cancer away so fantastic and unreal that leads one to suspect that “Bowie” (Born David Robert Jones) sprang from the twisted, fervid minds of social psychologists residing at the Tavistock Institute.
That was all one sentence.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the Tavistock Institute is a nearly 70-year-old British think-tank that does work in psychology and the social sciences; it’s a favorite bugbear of assorted conspiracy theorists, who blame it for, among other things, the brainwashing of American prisoners of war in Korea, the CIA’s MK Ultra program, and The Beatles.
Anyway, Hamamoto is pretty stoked by the news of Bowie’s passing, declaring that
the Death of David Bowie might presage a new era of spiritual regeneration that is the precondition of civilizational health and advancement.
Skimming through the more than one thousand comments left on Hamamoto’s post so far, it appears that there are not a lot of Bowie fans in the house.
Someone called daf declares that
Bowie was an agent of the NWO, forging acceptance for gender identity politics re: transvestites, transgender, gays… Not to mention furtherance of the ET/ Alien meme that the NWO sought to advance. Listen to the music: is it really that good? Nah.
“The Hebrew Institute,” meanwhile, argues that
David Bowie can kiss my ass… he was a fuckin satanistic edomite who is rotting in the pit for his homosexual acts and overtones to accept that behavior not of God and he is now paying for it….may he keep rotting in the pit of hell to which he deserves AMEN.
Blahblahblah is clearly not a big fan of Bowie’s unique style:
He was a Luciferian puppet, spreading NWO agenda through music like so many others. Look at the lightning bolt on his face.
But not everyone in the comments is quite so enamored of Hamamoto’s analysis. Indeed, one longtime Infowars listener was so appalled by the post, and the responses to it, that they decided to become a former listener:
After years of being a dedicated listener, observer and supporter of this program I just cut ties with you all together. … I’ve stuck up for your articles and it’s caused me a lot of social consternation … your OPINIONS and ASSUMPTIONS in this matter are so far off base it makes me want to vomit on my computer screen. Then reading the hateful comments on this page about homosexuals and FREAKS makes me want to jump this boat and join the illuminated manipulators … The fact of the matter is that this was a talented human being with much love and talent to offer the world and the author ties this in to some “homosexual illuminati occult agenda” … [T]hat I have supported such a bigoted support base here is something I am ashamed of after all these years.
Good for you.
In case you’re not familiar with Infowars, here’s Alex Jones, the dude who runs the place. And yes, the tantrum in the video is a real one. He’s got some anger issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIkoV7RAda4
And here are a couple of videos of Bowie performing in 1972.
Yesterday, I put together a little playlist of some of my favorite Bowie songs on Spotify.
Sorry, Alex Jones; you will be remembered, if at all, as an embarrassment to humanity. Bowie will be remembered as a musical and cultural legend, albeit a far from perfect human being.
EDIT: I reworded the ending to take into account Bowie’s reported rape of underage “groupie” Laurie Maddox, which I didn’t know about when I originally wrote the piece. (I say “reported,” because I wasn’t there and he wasn’t charged much less convicted for it, but Maddox’s account is all-too-plausible; I believe her.)
“If I’m wrong about him being a child predator, I’ll totally own it when the evidence appears. Until then, I’ll continue to love him till Tuesday… and beyond.”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but you have my permission to love him no matter what. I think that’s a better position to take, honestly, because humans is humans and that means complicated, horrible, monstrous, problematic. And what I love about Bowie’s work (other than the musical innovation) is how unapologetically his songs portrayed this ambiguous messiness.
All that matters is not making excuses and always leaving room for survivors to speak their truth and find healing.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/teacosy/2016/01/11/david-bowie-was-wonderful-he-was-also-an-abuser-how-do-we-handle-that/
@Hambeast
I googled “satanistic edomite” but decided not to plummet down the enormous rabbit hole that appeared before me.
It was a lot of this:
I’m actually a bit disappointed in this thread tbh. I’ve read that he slept with a 13 year old groupie. If this wasn’t a massive star people wouldn’t be making excuses about it being a time when power struggles weren’t spoken about, or he was wrong but a different kind of wromg…..just no. A 13 year old can’t give informed consent. I’ve seen that written by commemters here many times but it seems to be forgotten now?!
Also I read in an article 13_ If that is incorrect I’d welcome further discussion but as is I can’t feel anything but revulsion at the excusing of this abuse of power.
Also adding I get very emotional about this issue and can pick things up wrong when I am upset so I apologise if I have and have upset anyone .
You might be referring to Sable Starr (Sable Hay Shields), a groupie involved with quite a few rock stars in LA during early 70s. Iggy Pop pretty much admitted to statutory rape with her in 1970, when she was 13, in lyrics, and to Paul Trynka in the biography Open Up and Bleed. Not sure how old she was when her and Bowie met, she may have been 16 by that stage (if someone knows more about this, please clarify). It’s unacceptable whatever the case and probably fair to assume Bowie wasn’t proud of his behaviour in regards to this.
For what it’s worth, I read a pretty good piece about mourning an artist who is somewhat (or a lot!) problematic – written specifically about Bowie. Dunno if the wee little bots will let me paste a link here, but let’s see…
http://aidamanduley.com/2016/01/12/david-bowie-time-to-mourn-or-call-out-2/
Ooh, an article on my birthday!
Oh, I’m familiar… unfortunately. I have to listen to that guy on Sundays and Mondays when my dad comes home from working up north. And yeah, he really has screaming tantrums. Heck, he’s one of those guys who has to yell over people so they never get a chance to speak at all!
I just can’t stand that guy.
@Ddog:
No, that hasn’t been forgotten, as you’ll see if you read my comment (and others) above.
To clarify to anyone wondering: no one is expected to love the works of David Bowie any less because of his crime. He remains an influental artist and a remarkable human being. It is possible to adore his life and career while condemning his shitty acts. And yes, it is sad that the issue is brought to common light now of all times, but maybe there never was a good time to bring it up.
The point was not to hijack the discussion about Bowie’s genuine accomplishments. But since the point was raised, I just wanted to explain my personal reason for not joining in, I guess.
you do realize that there’s no such thing as “consensual rape”, so when you say “the sex was fully consensual” it means that you are saying that it’s not any type of rape, right?
Also, combining that with calling 14 year olds “men and women”, adds a whole extra “ew” factor to that because 14 year olds aren’t adults
This particular one from Bowie might be appropriate for the Infowars folks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPVrFIP0CMs
RIP Bowie.
@LeftWingFox
Yesss one of my fav Bowie songs.
Almost every popular male musician was having sex with underage fans in the 1970’s. That doesn’t justify any of it. It shows our culture needed to change on that issue.
@Tanya
You weave a verbal tapestry of contradictions:
Fully consensual sex between an adult and a minor is still wrong and illegal.
“Probably” should be stopped? The law (informed by psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and so on) says (then and now) “definitely should be stopped — and if you don’t, you might go to prison.”
That is to David Bowie’s credit.
Wut? Who calls 14-year-olds “men and women”? And, not incidentally, are you talking about 14-year-olds, 15-year-olds, or 16-year-olds? I ask because your argument wanders.
Also, who says that 14-year-olds don’t know what they want? No one, that’s who.
The question is not what minors want. It’s what adults should (and must!) do. Wanting sex with a rock star isn’t the same thing as having sex with a rock star.
What I wouldn’t have given to see Bowie perform live in ‘ 72! I saw him in concert in ’87…I’ve been a fan of his since I was in my early teens.
My favorite Bowie song, I think, is “Soul Love”. The Man Who Fell to earth is a favorite film of mine… Bowie completely embodied the title character.
I don’t really have anything to say about the stories of him sleeping with an underaged teen. It’s deplorable, if true.
Was the last guy opposing the homophobia or defending David Bowie from accusations of tolerance?
The girl/young woman in question was Lori Maddox. She could not legally give consent and this was a damn-creepy thing Bowie did.
http://www.debriefdaily.com/lifestyle/lori-maddox-i-lost-my-virginity-to-david-bowie/
@Olive
Ten years.
Chiming in with Olive. Yes, Bowie had sex with Lori Maddox and possibly Sable Starr as well. According to Please Kill Me, Sable said she had sex with him too.
For years, Lori Maddox denied it and said she lost her virginity to Jimmy Page. Now I see she’s changed her tune.
When I was younger and dumber I looked up to Sable and Lori. They still fascinate me in a way. How did their friendship work? Why did they chase after rock stars? Did one have more influence over the other or nope? There’s a story there neither one of them has written.
Here’s my thing right now: I feel quite comfortable with the fact that i find myself being charitable and forgiving in my *feelings* towards – NOT judgement of – a statutory rapist who… just died after 18 months of cancer.
The judgement of the monstrous wrongness of what he did is obvious, and I hope to hell if there were others who he hurt they can find what they need and who they need to believe them. But anger and disgust just fizzle out because on an average day, I don’t wish cancer on even the worst of sadistic predators. And the worst I usually see people here wish on the worst of people is stepping on Legos.
LG, thank you for this (and everything else you’ve said so far, which really resonates a lot with me). There’s a lot in this to unpack, so I’m gonna just say off the top of my head what it shook loose in me:
I really do hope that incident you mentioned at the top of your post proves to have been real; it would make a lot of difference to me, and to those of us who love his music and don’t want to stop appreciating him both for that and for his overall humanity.
It would also jibe with the impression I got about the whole Lori Maddox (or Mattix) incident, too, which is that, like the Nazi-salute controversy, it happened fairly early in his career, when he was still doing a lot of cocaine (and possibly other drugs as well). He later gave up the drug(s), and even went so far as to move to West Berlin in 1976 to stay away from anyone who might suck him back into that life, because he could see that addiction was destroying his mind (he was paranoid and malnourished, and scared shitless of the death he knew he’d face if he didn’t get clean). If that incident proves to be also due in part to the influence of drugs and his impaired judgment at the time, I won’t say it excuses it exactly, but it certainly would mitigate what I’d otherwise think of him. Especially if it transpires at some point that he thought it over soberly later on, and was genuinely contrite about the stupidity of it all.
It doesn’t strike me as a great coincidence that I came to know and love his music AFTER he got off drugs; not only because I was old enough to start appreciating it then (I was 12 when he came back from Berlin, in recovery, looking better, and sounding just amazing), but also because the style of his stuff changed. It was more thoughtful, less louche. “Ashes to Ashes”, in particular, has stuck with me, because it sounds like what he must actually have been thinking right before he made the decision to get clean. He made some great records during that three-year recovery period. Plus he branched out into acting soon after that, and then came his really big second wind in the ’80s, when 15-year-old me heard “Let’s Dance” and finally understood why the radio DJs were raving about him…
What I’m trying to get at, I guess, is that as wrong as it is for a 23-year-old to take advantage of a 15-year-old, I really do hope he regretted it, and took it as proof that he needed to get out of La La Land and get back to his better self. Just as I really do hope that John Lennon was contrite about all the wrongs he’d done to the women in his life when he and Yoko reconciled, and that the hopeful, growth-infused tone of Double Fantasy is the proof that he thought things through and became a better man (I’m thinking of the lyrics to “Woman”, in particular).
I say this because I’m really sick of all the vulturish noises I’m hearing from the more rabid radfem types (not coincidentally, all the “feminist” Bowie-hate I’ve seen so far comes from TERFs, who are ideologically less distant from MRAs than they think) that seem determined to paint all these guys as just unilaterally evil and awful, with absolutely nothing to redeem them. And who seem to get a nasty kick out of pissing all over those of us who DO think there are still redeeming qualities to these guys, even if they did do some shitty and inexcusable things early on in life. And who seem to want to lord this over the rest of us, as if it really does make them better feminists to renounce and hate what they used to enjoy, because reasons. Why, if they knew and were so concerned about all that, did they wait until AFTER his death to make such a ruckus about it? Why not BEFORE?*
I feel that since male privilege is learned, it can therefore be UNlearned, if one makes a sincere effort. Maybe not in the case of an obvious, hardcore pedophile like Gary Glitter, who doesn’t even think that he’s doing anything wrong, but a David Bowie, who navigated a greyer area and wasn’t so predatory in other relationships, and who showed general signs of being far more thoughtful, especially afterward? I like to think he did learn from his past blunders, and I really hope this was the case here. It would serve as a positive example to other guys who also have cause to sincerely regret some things they’ve done, and who want to learn to do better.
*I never even knew about Lori M. until yesterday, so I clearly have a lot of mental processing to do. I’m determined not to fall into the knee-jerk reaction trap, though. Sorry if I rambled, and thanks all for bearing with me.
This sounds horribly apologistic (?) of me… but people do learn and change, for better and for worse. Given he’d been married (happily, to all appearances) for over two decades to someone in his age bracket, I think it entirely possible Bowie at the end of his life could have been ashamed and repulsed by a lot of the actions of his much younger self. There also wasn’t a lot of thought during that time on how psychologically damaging to it would be to girls to have sex with them that age, no matter how willing they seemed, especially not in the world of 70’s rock.
And god, I don’t want to sound like I’m rationalizing or apologizing for his behavior. Yes, it was inexcusably skeevy, especially in the context of 2016, and I’m going ‘ew’ at the thought. It also, however, didn’t look like he was going specifically out of his way to look for underage girls to predate on, and as time went on Bowie left it off entirely. He did change his behavior.
Big fucking change from Cosby, who knowingly and intentionally looked for trusting women to drug and violate, did it for fucking decades, and got off on it. He himself had plenty of women throwing themselves at him, but he continued to drug and rape unwilling ones, which says volumes about how despicable he is. And he never fucking changed his behavior a damned bit.
I used to listen to his comedy and his stories growing up, and his routines used to be part of the usual whacked-out stream of consciousness dialogue my husband and I throw at each other and which passes for conversation in introverts like us. No more now. Ever. And I don’t blame Bill Cosby’s victims, I blame fucking Bill Cosby’s behavior for making what he created toxic to me today.
David Bowie, on the other hand, seemed like he learned. He did things that can’t be fixed, but he grew and matured beyond that.
YES. Exactly. And it IS changing, and that’s good. Let’s hope this incident serves as an impetus to keep that cultural change going.
This sounds horribly apologistic (?) of me… but people do learn and change, for better and for worse. Given he’d been married (happily, to all appearances) for over two decades to someone in his age bracket, I think it entirely possible Bowie at the end of his life could have been ashamed and repulsed by a lot of the actions of his much younger self. There also wasn’t a lot of thought during that time on how psychologically damaging to it would be to girls to have sex with them that age, no matter how willing they seemed, especially not in the world of 70’s rock.
And god, I don’t want to sound like I’m rationalizing away his behavior. Yes, it was inexcusably skeevy, especially in the context of 2016, and I’m going ‘ew’ at the thought. It also, however, didn’t look like he was going specifically out of his way to look for underage girls to predate on, and as time went on Bowie left it off entirely. He did change his behavior.
Big fucking change from Cosby, who knowingly and intentionally looked for trusting women to drug and violate, did it for fucking decades, and got off on it. He himself had plenty of women throwing themselves at him, but he continued to drug and rape unwilling ones, which says volumes about how despicable he is. And he never fucking changed his behavior a damned bit.
I used to listen to his comedy and his stories growing up, and his routines used to be part of the usual whacked-out stream of consciousness dialogue my husband and I throw at each other and which passes for conversation in introverts like us. No more now. Ever. And I don’t blame Bill Cosby’s victims, I blame fucking Bill Cosby’s behavior for making what he created toxic to me today, as much as I blame myself in my white-privleged world for feeling like I willingly was taken in by his seemingly benign public persona and ignoring the rapist shitlord underneath it.
David Bowie, on the other hand, seemed like he learned. He did things that can’t be fixed, but he grew and matured beyond that. And even though he did those things, we’ve still lost an irreplacable talent. As torn as I am on the whole subject, I still can’t dispute it, and I’m still mourning a bit.
God, but I’m torn.
*cough* Someone might wanna delete that dupe post of mine up there. I pressed the wrong button too early, my bad.
@Bina
I like how you put it, both Bowie’s change in behavior and the holier-than-thou pearl-clutching to his earlier behavior AFTER his death. Thanks.