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David Bowie Was Extremely Pro-Fascist For A Time
David Bowie's career was one of constant reinvention, so it was only a matter of time before one of his gazillion personas turned out to be a bit of a dick. This happened way back in 1975, during a strange period when the mind behind "Rebel Rebel" called for ... a fascist uprising in Britain.
Yes, really.
This was not your garden-variety right-wing stuff, either. At an early stage of his career, Bowie said: "I believe very strongly in fascism."
In a 1974 interview with Playboy: "Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars. Look at some of the films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger."
And an outright call to arms that, if stated today, would net Bowie a permanent gig with Breitbart: "You've got to have an extreme right-wing front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up."
That's like Lady Gaga waving a tiki torch in Charlottesville. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Bowie started off talking about getting lost in the character of Ziggy Stardust, and the mania that caused, then casually transitioned into: "I could have been Hitler in England. Wouldn't have been hard. Concerts alone got so enormously frightening that even the papers were saying, 'This ain't rock music, this is bloody Hitler! Something must be done!' And they were right. It was awesome. Actually, I wonder ... I think I might have been a bloody good Hitler. I'd be an excellent dictator. Very eccentric and quite mad."
In 1977, after a photo emerged in which Bowie appeared to be giving a Nazi salute (but probably was just waving), he was quick to publicly and thoroughly denounce ever being a fascist. The fact that this happened soon after he had been detained on the Russian-Polish border for attempting to smuggle an assload of Nazi memorabilia is probably a coincidence.
4
Martin Luther King Jr. Was The World's Worst Advice Columnist
You know the old saying: "Iconic Civil Rights leaders make terrible advice columnists."
What? It's a saying. We said it.
Anyway, it's true. People writing into a magazine to have Martin Luther King Jr. help them with their personal issues sounds like the plot of a South Park episode, but it truly happened in real life. From 1957 to 1958, one of the greatest Americans in history wrote an agony aunt column for Ebony magazine. In his monthly Advice For Living, MLK offered his thoughts on all sorts of topics, from major issues of race to more traditional Dear Abby fare, like personal issues and crumbling marriages.
And he fucking sucked at it.
When a reader wrote him about her husband having an affair with another woman in their neighborhood, King told her to take up stalking: "In the meantime, since the other person is so near you might study her and see what she does for your husband that you might not be doing." King also helpfully noted that the woman herself was probably to blame, outlining all the ways in which she might be disappointing her unfaithful partner: "Do you spend too much time with the children and the house and not pay attention to him? Are you careful with your grooming? Do you nag? Do you make him feel important ... like somebody? This process of introspection might help you to hit upon the things that are responsible for your husband's other affair." That's right, ladies! If your husband cheats on you, the "I have a dream" guy says it's because you spend too much time tending to your children.
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