They say as you grow older, you start to realize you and your folks really aren’t all that different. You hold tightly to certain beliefs as a teenager, but you eventually understand why Mom wouldn’t let you get a beeper, or wear a Slipknot mask to school, or meet up with that sketchy guy you met in a chat room claiming to be Judge Ito. And with the recent news of Marilyn Manson being in fact, evil incarnate, it looks like good ol’ Mom and I have one more thing to bond over.
As a teenager, I hated how my Mom would throw my Manson CDs in the garbage, or forbid me to watch his videos on MTV. Jeez, she wouldn’t even let me tear up a real Bible as Manson did on stage (I had to use the previous year’s Farmer’s Almanac instead). But now that multiple women have come forward to accuse him of being more “Man that you Fear” than “Beautiful People,” I get her reasoning. Not so much because of the cross-dressing, and atheism though. More because of the utterly horrendous domestic abuse allegations.
Sure, our reasons may differ, Mom didn’t see why he needed to “dress in girl’s clothing” or “question the word of the one true savior,” while I’m more turned off by the whole “ruining the lives of much younger women” thing. But the bottom line is, this has brought two generations closer together. In fact, we both now agree that the Eurythmics version of Sweet Dreams is just fine the way it is, thank you very much.
Perhaps after all these years, Mom and I can finally do that mass album smashing the youth pastor at our parish was so intent on. I guess now we can really only delete Marilyn Manson Spotify playlists, and unfollow his Youtube channel, but it could still be a pretty powerful statement. I’ll even burn my old Mechanical Animals t-shirt with the Dippin Dots stains.
Hey, maybe I’ll give that girl Sharon a call, the Christian protester outside of the Manson concert I made my Mom take me to. Mom always thought she seemed like a nice girl, and far better than that Gabriella I met inside, who carved my name into her thigh.
I don’t agree with Mom’s homophobia, evangelical hate speech, and complete lack of empathy for anyone who dares to not conform completely to white Christian, middle-American norms. I’m just opposed to the whole abusing women repeatedly stuff.
Oh, and Mom was also right about Michale Graves, Ellen Degeneres, J.K Rowling, and (weirdly) Jared from Subway.