The violent pornographer and self-identified Satanic singer who goes by Marilyn Manson turns out to be a pretty bad guy. Who would have guessed?
Brian Warner (his real name) was arrested earlier this month on assault charges. His ex-girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood says he abused her and even raped her on camera while filming a foul music video that was supposed to be simulated sex. Singer Phoebe Bridgers says when she was a teenager, Manson pointed out his “rape room” to her.
In public, Manson was belligerent and violent. By every indication, he’s a bad and hateful person who uses people as objects.
But he tore up Bibles onstage, celebrated abortions in his videos, screamed about the fascist oppression of Christianity, and named his album Antichrist Superstar, so he spent decades getting glowing coverage from media elites.
“This is our fight, and it is against conservatism and ignorance,” Manson would brag, “whether in American politics or American Christianity.”
And the press, even if they didn’t love his screeching music and juvenile worldview, ate up his main point. The Washington Post noted that Manson “scandalizes parents, the church and professional virtue-crats” before praising his “charismatic presence, arriving onstage wearing an off-white bloodstained corsetlike back brace, a white jockstrap and ripped black tights.”
“Manson could be regarded as a well-meaning but eccentric camp counselor,” a Washington Post review explained. “He’s providing a kind of emotional support, a sense of belonging, for teenagers grappling with the awkwardness of growing up.”
A Buffalo News story endorsed his claim that “we don’t lie to kids, we tell the truth and what the repercussions will be. It’s about self-responsibility …”
The New York Times actually criticized him in 2000 for getting boring but granted, “Mr. Manson’s discontented howls form a cogent response to family values-based attacks on rock. His concept of the “antichrist superstar,” hated for embodying society’s darker side, rings true, as do his surprisingly tender views of disenfranchised youth.” Still, the New York Times lamented, he was “inching toward thoughtless conservatism.”
Feminists praised him for paying Wood handsomely for the depraved and pornographic video she now says was rape. Manson, MTV explained, blew off criticism of the video at the time: “Let’s say there were some conservative people involved that got a little upset about things that were taking place …”
It’s an increasingly common story. The things that conservatives got called prudes for criticizing — like pornography, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton — become universally recognized as bad, especially for women. It turns out that the people who said their only sexual morality was respect for “consent” do not have a good track record of respecting consent. And it turns out that being an enemy of conservatives and Christianity might not make you a good person.
