However bogus their politics and their music, the punk generation’s cynicism at least was real, and honestly come by. They were the sour and mostly untalented end of a growing spectrum of disrespect: for the past, for authority, for public figures and public affairs. In its wittier incarnations, this scorn for pomposity and tradition took its cue from the disabused young British political satirists who had first surfaced nearly two decades earlier: the theatre review Beyond the Fringe; the BBC late-night show That Was the Week That Was; and the weekly magazine Private Eye. Exploiting the
...more
