No Rock And Roll Fun

"HE LIED TO ME" CRIES NOEL: Something slightly sinister in Noel's outburst about George Michael's Walk The Dog single, don't you think? Noel seems to think that because George was in the closet for a long time, this means he's an unfit person to have an opinion on world affairs. Noel Gallagher, you might remember, popped in to show his support for Tony Blair just after the grinning head of the nation won his first election victory - a victory that owed quite a bit to Peter Mandelson, a man who would never be less than totally upfront about his sexuality. But why is Noel so concerned about Michael having "lied" about his sexuality? (As if, Noel, you couldn't tell - the hair? the leather jackets? the endless promotion of David Austin?) Did Noel have a little tiny crush on Wham when he was a wee boy with two eyebrows? Does Noel have a whole heap of issues here?
And besides: In what way is Noel fit to lay down who should or shouldn't have an opinion? We've not forgotten his and his brother's pointless yakking after the World Trade Centre which showed a lack of both perspective and understanding and, if we had to choose (and let's hope it never comes to this) I'd rather side with Michael's simplistic Blair-battering and strange world of polymorphus peversity than the gallaghers dull, little englander me tub thumping.
Both your latest singles are shite, mind.
Michael is also getting it in the neck for "not releasing" Walk the dog in the US, which is a bit unfair since he doesn't even have a record deal in the States at the moment, and sticking out a record in America which says "The UK is America's lapdog" would be seen less as satirical, more as accurate reporting. And, besides, in the UK we raise an eyebrow at George's claims to want to seduce Cherie Blair and say "Oh, really?", whereas in the US, they'd go "Cherry Bear? Was that one of the Care Bears?" The record is hardly appropriate for an American audience.
Charles Shaar Murray has waded in to defend Michael against Rod Liddle, Today editor and Guardian columnist. In The Guardian, Rod had basically suggested that he might not want to take political science lessons from the man who wrote Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Hitting back, Murray wrote in The Observer that Liddle was trying to stop 'outsiders' from muscling in on the political comment cake. This is a bit rich, especially when you consider that it was Liddle's Today which gave Gruff from the Super Furru Animals a platform one morning to talk about something; from which we learned merely that popstars don't do "before nine" well. CSM's bit also manages to find enough space to mention that Liddle allows Nick Griffin from the BNP onto Today, but strangely not enough to make it clear that this is because he believes that in a democratic nation, even nazi scum should be allowed to a platform, the better to hang themselves on their own vile words. Funny thing is, Nick Griffin's complaint about the media is that they deny platforms to anyone outside the political mainstream - exactly the same thing Charles is banging on about.