With some honorable exceptions, are today's stars running scared of the bully state?
"What on earth has happened to the tradition of stars breaking taboos and causing mayhem?" asks Tom Miers on The Free Society.
It used to be said that the decadence of Western rock culture was a sign of our free society. The rockers reacted against the conservative mores of the post war years, and the more they were condemned the worse they behaved.
What started with floppy haircuts swiftly graduated to orgies, drugs, swearing, sex acts on stage, trashing hotels and general hell-raising. Smoking and drinking were minor props to the carnival of chaos ...
The whole point of rock ‘n’ roll is that it’s meant to break taboos and rebel against the established norms of boring old responsible society. So you would have thought that the stars of today would love nothing better than sticking a v-sign up at the PC brigade, not to mention the health lobbyists.
So what have they to be afraid of? Not falling sales, surely. Really bold establishment-bashing improves popularity among the young.
Perhaps there’s something else. Being a rebel now involves not so much teasing old fuddy-duddies as teasing government. And government carries a big stick. The bully state is starting to clamp down on opinions and behaviour it disapproves of. Maybe the rockers are running scared.