For once, don't blame Fleet Street : it was they what got took !
To this day, most people think it was a British Tabloid editor at something like the Daily Mail (or worse) who first blared out the screaming 1965 headline, "would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone ?"
If was this headline, reproduced worldwide and then forever after, that most people agreed "made" the Rolling Stones.
Actually, the original tagline was from a series of ads ran by the canny manager of the Stones, youngster Andrew Loog Oldham, in a few music weeklies --- and only later picked up and improved upon by Fleet Street heavies.
Oldham was very young - even younger than the Stones and had never run a band before - was in fact too young to legally get a music agent's license, but he made up in street smarts what he lacked in age, experience, contacts or capital.
He was half Australian which might account for a good bit of his sheer brass. Who knows, maybe he is Down Under, visiting relatives, and offering pro bono advice to our Christine.
Anyway, back to the Stones --- itt was obvious too - in hindsight - that it was a father editor , not a mother editor, who reproduced the headline along with a frantically worried editorial.
No mother would be so daft : mothers - women - in fact know damn well that lots of nice girls love to go out with bad boys.
Particularly bad boys that good old Dad can't stand and forbids them to ever see.
Okay, now cue "The Nasty".
"The Nasty", head of the Australian Liberal (libertarian ) party, is ironically enough less a libertarian on social issues and rather more a wet blanket catholic of the most hair-shirted variety.
So naturally, "The Nasty" has taken the bait that the Green party leader Christine Milne (or someone a lot like her) has so carefully laid out for him .
He and his tame newspapers are off on a tear about all the evils that will prevail upon hapless morally-muddled Aussies if they dare to think of dating a Green.
Its a risky strategy "Nasty" - just listen to ole Rupert . His papers may have gotten a one day blip in circulation out of repeating the headline ,but it was the R. Stones who have been dining out on it ever since.
And frankly, "Nasty", if you have anything left after you tithe, I 'd take it out of shares in News Corpse and put it into Sticky Fingers, PLC.
My bet is that 10 years from now, they'll be worth a lot more than a few newspaper properties filled with rusting Big Iron and no customers.
And if someday, during your watch, the Green Horror ends up in Government or Opposition, prepare to blame yourself.
Voters are a lot like daughters : they don't always like being told what NOT to do ....
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