Henry Rollins

It probably wasn’t a conscious decision on your part, but nobody plays for long with the showbiz crowd and remains untouched. Despite your eschewal of drugs and alcohol and continuing preference for unadorned T-shirts, Henry, you know you’re one of them now.

While you seem to think your political opinions are still perceptive and edgy, they’re mostly recognizable as the default liberal opinions of the LA set you hang with these days. But having read a few books by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky does not make you somehow more enlightened than the average Joe with whom you claim affinity but toward whom you actually condescend. At this point you have a lot more in common with Tori Spelling than you do with Sid Vicious.

Maybe you were always like this. Maybe it’s me who’s changed. But whichever it is, Henry, your self-serving stories about visiting the troops through the USO and knocking around the Third World to see how the other half lives”€”once so entertaining”€”have become intolerable these past couple of years. The same can be said of the inanities about universal brotherhood you derive from these experiences:

It makes you see humans can get along just fine….It’s governments and foreign policy getting in the way of the global fun to be had.

Your hysteria over contraception and the fact you “feel bad for women” and worry “we’re going back in time”€ is a facile pose, Henry. If you respected women you might have married one instead of scribbling about your many dysfunctional relationships. You wouldn’t be 51 and still dating because it’s hard for you to be “truly close to someone” or whatever neurotic Hollywood excuse you use.

Henry, in hindsight, it now seems clear that the supposed individualism and self-actualization you made a career out of promoting was only another form of the self-absorption that Malcolm Muggeridge called the Great Liberal Death Wish.

To prevent others from succumbing to that delusion, I think it’s time to ask you nicely to do what you once so crudely demanded of Ann Coulter: Henry Rollins”€”with all the love and respect due to you”€”please shut up.

Best wishes,

T. R. Bennington