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Anarchy For Me, Not For Thee

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Peter Angelos In Foul Territory

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Califonia's School Quackery

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A Critical First Step

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Taking Aim At The Constitution

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The Great GOP Land Grab

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Million Mom March: Much Less than Advertised

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New York's New Archbishop

5/19/00 12:45 p.m.
Anarchy For Me, Not For Thee
In politics, there's always room for Jello.

By Brandon Bosworth, an editor with The American Enterprise.

hird-party politics are often, by nature, goofy. A clear case in point would be what is perhaps the most successful third party in America today: the Reform Party. What could be goofier then a party in which the two most visible veterans are a bald, giant ex-wrestler and a folksy, paranoid leprechaun with a personal pot of gold?

Well, how about a party that is considering nominating a former punk rocker and accused porn peddler who shares his name with a hospital dessert staple and an African nation famous for barbarity and famine?

The party in question is the Green Party, whose candidate for President in 2000 may be Mr. Jello Biafra. Chances are he won't get that far. The front-runner is returning nominee Ralph Nader, who will probably secure the (non-)coveted nomination. Even Biafra plans on voting for him. The very thought of another Nader presidential bid, no matter how futile and quixotic such a bid may be, cannot help but give a conservative the creeps. Heaven forbid, someday the Greens may get 5 percent of the vote and receive matching funds! But no matter how radical Mr. Public Interest may seem, he is downright sensible in comparison to the aforementioned Jello Biafra.

Biafra, whose real name is Eric Boucher, first gained notoriety in the late '70s as lead singer and lyricist in the critically lauded hard-core punk band, the Dead Kennedys. His fame quickly expanded beyond musical circles when he ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1979. Though his campaign started as something of a joke, he eventually garnered enough votes to come in fourth in a ten-candidate race. Biafra's platform included the banning of automobiles and legalized squatting in vacant buildings.

Apparently for Jello there's always room for politics. Ronald Reagan became a favored target in the '80s. In 1983, the Dead Kennedys headlined a "Rock Against Reagan" concert on the mall in the nation’s capital. The following year, Biafra staged protests in front of the Republican convention in Dallas, shouting "f**k off and die!" to bewildered conventioneers.

However, Biafra's antics at the Democratic convention were equally high-minded. He and his bandmates took the stage wearing KKK hoods, which they removed to reveal Reagan masks worn underneath. The point seems to be that Biafra didn't really care for Reagan, perhaps because the president preferred jellybeans to Jello. He apparently has greater respect for Reagan's old nemesis, the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom he occasionally quotes, specifically the line "All Western countries are bad. Nothing but evil comes from them."

Meanwhile, Biafra continued to work in the music biz. His record label, Alternative Tentacles, released albums by bands such as the B**thole Surfers and the Crucif**ks. In 1986 his own band produced an album called "Frankenchrist," which featured a cover painting by H. R. Giger depicting erect penises entering vaginal-like orifices. Soon thereafter Biafra found himself charged with the crime of "Distribution of Harmful Matter to Minors." The charges were later dropped, and Jello became a First Amendment icon — along with such esteemed individuals as Larry Flynt and Luther Campbell (of rap group 2 Live Crew) — among First Amendment idolaters. In his new role he found himself in demand on the talk-show circuit, appearing on Crossfire and Donahue, and sparring with Tipper Gore on Oprah.

In the '90s, Biafra has continued his musical career, recording charming ditties such as "Will the Fetus be Aborted?" and contributing a couple of songs to the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's film Natural-Born Killers. He has also ventured into the realm of the terminally egotistical: the spoken-word tour and album.

The ultimate hope of the self-important is that eventually, others will think they are important too. Apparently it works. Some members of the New York Green party drafted Biafra into running as a candidate for President. Green vice chairman Craig Seeman believes Biafra "will speak to a different audience then Nader does."

Jello has sprung into the race with all the bounce of his dessert namesake. He has selected cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. And he has concocted a platform that is simple and old-fashioned in a New Left/Maoist sort of way.

For starters, he would abolish the military, DEA, CIA, and all nuclear weapons. But how about national security? the curious voter might ask. Of course, the average voter probably doesn't realize, as Jello does, that "our biggest national security threat is the environmental destruction of our planet."

Not one to believe people have the right to freely exchange goods and services, Biafra would have the U. S. withdraw from the WTO and NAFTA, as well as establish a "maximum wage" for all Americans, capping income at $100,000 annually. He states, "We don’t need a flat tax, but a flattening tax, to truly level the playing field." Income exceeding Jello's mandatory limit would be used for "payback--free health care, free education, free transportation, (including air travel), and more." Besides, "what does more damage to the planet, drug addiction or wealth addiction?"

For those who fret over the political and economic literacy of the average citizen, they can take great solace from the fact that even the studio audience of Politically Incorrect booed Biafra when he proposed this plan.

The very much alive Dead Kennedy’s other ideas include citizen election of police officers (surely to be a concept gang lords everywhere would love), scrapping the Constitution and establishing Parliamentary rule, lowering the voting age to five, and eradicating SUVs. Some took this as a sign Biafra was mellowing, because he had campaigned on banning automobiles entirely when he ran for mayor of San Francisco. Biafra also feels schools should have "mandatory classes on parenting and offer drug and sex education, using actual drugs and sex in class." Oh yes, then there is re-education, namely his idea to have children of the "rich" (a worrisome bracket considering his 100k maximum wage) "taken away and locked in orphanages" so they can "have some empathy for real people by the time they were adults."

Basically Biafra's platform would create, not a dictatorship of the proletariat, but a dictatorship of the hippies. This is very strange to punks and ex-punks like myself who have slightly different ideas of what the whole movement was about. Early punks hated hippies, which is why they cut their hair short and spiky. Long-hair was for the granola crowd, as was facial hair. The Ramones, a band that supposedly greatly influenced the Dead Kennedys, were professed Reaganites, though they were unsure if the Gipper was "conservative enough." Legendary punk singer John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), of the Sex Pistols and PiL, sang songs attacking abortion, promiscuity, and the welfare state, yet defended (gasp!) making money. While Biafra chums up with thugs like Abu-Jamal, Lydon refused his old manager's request to sing with convicted train robber Ronnie Biggs, as it offended his sense of morality. Not to say Jello has no sense of morality; it’s just that he elevates murderers to saintly status and demands that SUV drivers be put in camps.

How about the punk idea of anarchy? Biafra states, "I am an anarchist in my personal life," but "we have not evolved enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself." To help those not as evolved as he, Biafra feels government is still needed to "transfer the wealth from those who have too much to those who have too little" and keep "territorial humans from screwing over and killing each other." So until we all rise to the level of Uber-Jello, we will have to wait for anarchy and make do with totalitarianism.

Luckily, we will likely never see a President (or Chairman) Biafra. Even in New York, the very state that nominated him, Biafra only got about 13 percent of the Green vote. Nader will get the Green Party nomination, since the Greens are crazy, not stupid. (That assertion is open to debate.) Nader will lose the general election, winning mostly the votes of assorted hairy-faced men and hairy-legged women, and perhaps a few Fresh Fields shoppers.

As for Jello, as long as there are rebellious, suburban college kids with "Mao More Then Ever!" T-shirts in the world, there will always be someone willing to shell out the bucks to hear his "enlightened" political commentary.

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