Rock Music is Still Evil

By David Shankbone [CC BY 3.0]

A left-leaning atheist woman I follow on Twitter whose profile contains the hashtags #FreedomOfSpeech and #FreeSpeech recently tweeted about how a particular game should be pulled from Apple's App Store and Google Play because she objected to some of the game's content...*sigh*. Yep. I guess supporting freedom of speech just doesn't mean what it used to.

Frankly, it seems like some on the left are now going after games that offend their politically correct sensibilities in much the same way that some of those on the right used to go after music and books they considered dangerous, subversive, or demonic. While many on the left once protested the pro-censorship push of some right-wing authoritarians, the rise of an authoritarian left (or regressive left if you prefer) seems to have no problem embracing the tactics they once opposed.

In such a topsy-turvy world, it is nice to have an anchor, something or someone who shows that not everything has flipped on its head. Such an anchor lends a sense of stability, reminding us that not everything has changed so much that the place is no longer recognizable. It is a source of reassurance, at least in this sense.

Thanks to Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) for his recent post giving me just such an anchor in my time of need: Christian extremist Pat Robertson. It seems that Pat is still convinced that listening to rock music is sinful and that it can summon demons. And fortunately, he still has the platform of The 700 Club to share his views with the public. Good ole Pat!

From RightWingWatch:

“It depends on what rock you’re listening to,” he said. “Some of the stuff is just evil. They used to talk about killing your parents and there were just some other things. There were odes to Satan. You don’t want that stuff coming into your mind. There’s some beat that’s out there that, you know, probably isn’t all that bad, although in one Indian context, they were playing rock music and the person said, ‘Why are you calling on the demons?,’ because that was the kind of music they used to summon demons.”

Much of the rock I listen to is what Pat would undoubtedly judge as evil. For example, it is difficult to imagine Pat not considering Slayer's Christ Illusion album a wee bit evil. But as many times as I have listened to it, no demons. At least I can take some solace in the notion that I have had many "odes to Satan" coming into my mind.