Pete Townshend Speaks

By now everyone knows that Pete Townshend has been arrested for acquiring child pornography online. One interesting bit of background material is an article about kiddie porn that Pete Townshend posted to his website last August, then removed for legal reasons; it is now being circulated via e-mail by the critic/reporter Dave Marsh. For whatever it's worth, the piece fits the musician's version of events.

I say "for whatever it's worth" because, even if Townshend is completely innocent of pedophilic behavior and desire—as I hope he is—his actions would still be illegal under Britain's remarkably strict laws. Meanwhile, here in America, journalists have been imprisoned for doing exactly what Townshend claims he was doing.