Famed rock group the Rolling Stones played the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., Monday, and according to numerous fans reporting on Twitter, lead singer Mick Jagger took a shot at the current White House resident and his recently revealed domestic surveillance program.
Self-described progressive @MikeCarvalho tweeted during the show, "I don't think President Obama is here, but I'm sure he's listening in.' - Mick Jagger":
Rock legend Mick Jagger waded into presidential politics on NBC's Saturday Night Live this weekend singing a piece called "Tea Party."
The only candidate specifically mentioned by Jagger was Mitt Romney who he warned viewers, "Don't ever let him cut your hair" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, vulgarity warning):
Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger at the USA-Ghana World Cup match, June 26, 2010.
On Tuesday’s Larry King Live on CNN, a pre-recorded interview with Mick Jagger was shown in which the English musician talked about his decision to leave his home country in the 1970s to escape the 90 percent marginal tax rates of the time on high-income earners. After noting that he had made bad financial decisions in his earlier days of success, he recounted: "We had to leave England to acquire enough money to pay the taxes because in those days, in England, the high tax rate was 90 percent, so that's very hard. ... You made 100 pounds, they took 90. So it was very difficult to pay any debts back. So when we left the country, we would get more than the 10 pounds out of 100. You know, we might get 50 or something."
After King asked if he was "held in low regard in your mother country for leaving it," Jagger explained that, unlike in America, successful people are "resented" in most countries, including England:
I bet you thought rock and rollers in the '60s were all left-wing radicals advocating the violent takeover of America in order to replace our style of government with communism.
According to Ralph Benko, a conservative human rights advocate, you couldn't be more wrong:
[T]he evidence is that the greatest musicians of the golden age of Rock (to whose work we’re all still listening since nothing better has come along) are, where it counts the most, deeply conservative.
Taking this further, Benko believes the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who may have stopped America from installing a Marxist dictatorship (h/t Paul Chesser):