Mommy's Aging Monster            
Social Distortion's Mike Ness under the influence of Trump Derangement Syndrome           

In the '70s, I read of then-Alice Cooper manager Shep Gordon opining that Frank Sinatra had punched a motorist purely for publicity reasons.

'You think Sinatra does it because he thinks some guy needs to be pounded in the mouth? He does it to get into the straight press, which is a lot harder to do than getting into the music press.'

Many faded entertainment personalities see garish, public opposition to President Trump and America as a cheap ticket to revived currency in popular conversation. I won't assemble a corroborative list; doing so would feed their Frankensteins, so to speak, which I'll not do.

But one recent illustration I will note is Social Distortion singer Mike Ness. He reportedly leapt from a stage to brutally beat a ticket-buying fan who objected to the singer's lengthy, between song diatribe against President Trump and America. 

The fan, one Tim Hildebrand, had reportedly responded to the unrequested lecture by shouting that he'd paid for music, not a political rant. And he raised a finger in silent protest through two songs.

The Trump-supporting fan was said to have been restrained by other concert attendees or band security while Ness pummeled him. Hildebrand, per reports, suffered two black eyes, a split lip, a concussion, and a nearly knocked out tooth.

A local CBS affiliate observed: "Hildebrand says he grew up listening to the band's music and was excited to attend one of their shows, but never thought he'd leave bloody and bruised at the hands of a famous musician."

Hildebrand filed a police report and is contemplating legal action. Presumably, that could include not only Ness, but the entire band, its management, promoters, and the venue, itself -- including any security personnel who allowed Ness to assault the paying Social Distortion fan.

Perhaps the largely past-tense Ness was, as Gordon observed of Sinatra, seeking fresh press attention that would resuscitate a career in its final season. Or, there may be a more sinister explanation for his vicious crime. (Most likely, some from Column A, some from Column B.)

Early in life, Mike Ness may actually have been the fractious bad seed he claimed in "Mommy's Little Monster." I neither know nor care. The reality is that rebelliousness is today merely a posture he cultivates to hawk product. 

A comfortably affluent pretender nearing AARP age, in recent years he's sought attention by recording solo discs covering far superior classics from Sun Records and other truly important sources. The combination only underscored his relative pedestrianism.

I've always agreed with Johnny Ramone's position that fun, lowbrow-culture punk rock was despoiled by whiny Californians and English bands feigning rebelliousness while polluting amphetemine rock'n'roll of NYC origin with tedious, liberal sloganeering.

As Ness may or may not understand, you can't be a rebel once your side has become the mainstream. It's everywhere one turns: government, business, entertainment, journalism, education. Only days ago, CNN's Chris Cuomo proclaimed to viewers "not all punches are equal" while defending Antifa attacks on Trump supporters as reflecting noble passion.

In 2018, Ness has become a profiting component of a system that dominates as surely as did the one against whose alleged injustices and inequities he once railed. 

The Trump Revolution is a fundamentally patriotic reaction to decades of government indifference to the people's legitimate wants and needs. That entrenched system concerned itself at every turn with the vested predilections of anti-freedom globalists. 

The Trump Revolution is today's counter culture, having kicked over polite political society's table in a manner as invigorating and inspirational as 1975's The Dictators Go Girl Crazy, 1976's
Ramones, and the Johnny Thunders Heartbreakers' 1977 L.A.M.F. 

Cantakerous Mike Ness, yesterday's late-night sidewalk insubordinate, now merely lurches as Maxine Waters' Willing Executioner.