I’m not a big hugger. And if I were, Noel Gallagher probably wouldn’t be my first target. But when I read the former Oasis frontman’s diatribe against the “virtue-signalling” acts at Glastonbury, I wanted to envelop the singer in the biggest Baloo-embrace of all time.
Criticising this year’s acts for “waving flags around” instead of focusing on the music, the 57-year-old told the Sun newspaper how his time at Worthy Farm this summer was marred by the “woke” and “preachy” bands and crowds. Specifically, by the “little f---ing idiots waving flags around and making political statements and bands taking the stage and saying: ‘Hey guys, isn’t war terrible, yeah? Let’s all boo war. F--k the Tories man,’ and all that.”
Adding: “Everybody knows what’s going on in the f---ing world, you’ve got a phone in your pocket that tells you anyway. What is the point of virtue-signalling?”
The point, Noel, is to let everyone know that you feel injustices more keenly than anyone else. That you are focussed on the right injustices: the ones Twitter/X and Instagram have assured you are in vogue. And it’s all so cheap, so gimmicky: the flags, the passing around of Banksy’s migrant dinghy. Only whoever changed the world in leather hotpants and wellies, a pint of cider in one hand and a spicy pork taco in the other?
With his unique brand of eloquence, Gallagher suggested the bands “play your f---ing tunes and get off”; and that people “donate all your money to the cause – stop yapping about it”. Because it’s one thing to have the courage of your convictions, but another to cut ‘n’ paste the convictions du jour in an attempt to bolster your own popularity.
When, shortly after the advent of MeToo, I interviewed the movement’s original founder, a Bronx-born activist named Tarana Burke, she made a point that has stayed with me ever since. You’ll remember that celebrities, keen to express their allegiance to the cause, were making a series of gimmicky statements involving all-black dress codes on red carpets and the wearing of pins and roses. Asked whether she felt this was useful, she diplomatically replied: “What’s most important is not getting distracted.”
It seems hilarious now, at a time when artists are cancelled for not being virtue-signalling and gimmicky enough, that someone like Bono was once criticised for being “too worthy.” Is it so terrible to want to use your platform to help combat Aids and poverty? To help combat any of the world’s injustices? Of course not. But the apocryphal story in which Bono tells a crowd, “Every time I clap my hands, in Africa another child dies”, and someone shouts back: “Well stop f---ing clapping then” sends up precisely the kind of scenes Gallagher has described.
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