Really ... Why are boomers so obsessed with cleansing rock stars of their sins?
Almost 42 years ago, chubby junkie, Doors mojo master, and FSU dropout Jim Morrison showed up in Coconut Grove's Dinner Key Auditorium, got extremely wasted, tried to sing "Touch Me," spiced up incoherent rants with "fuck" and "shit," and allegedly flashed his junk to 12,000 impressionable youths. More than 12 months later, he was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity.
And now, stiffneck boomer and outgoing Governor Charlie Crist has taken up the absolution of the Lizard King as his final official act, confirming yesterday that he'll be seeking a (way, way, way) posthumous pardon for Morrison from Florida's clemency board.
See the cut for more Lizard news, archival film of the scandal, and an audio recording from the infamous Dinner Key concert.
If you ask Crossfade, drunkenness, bad language, and nudity are prerequisites for rock outlaws, so the Miami conviction (though probably bogus) does nothing to actually tarnish Jimmy Mojo's legacy. (The ex-hippie petitionists would disagree.) But whatever happenened to jamming up the status quo? Pissing off the pigs? Making a stand for free love? News flash: Rock stars aren't supposed to be "respectable."
Yet, in an interview with the New York Times, Crist waxed weepy about the whole thing:
"I've decided that today," Mr. Crist said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "I've decided to do it, for the pure and simple reason that I just think it's the right thing to do. In some ways it seems like a tragic conclusion to a young man's life to have maybe this be a lasting legacy, where we're not even sure that it actually occurred. The more that I've read about the case and the more I get briefed on it, the more convinced I am that maybe an injustice has been done here.
"It just creates a lot of empathy, all these circumstances that add up," Mr. Crist. "And my heart bleeds for he and his family that this may not have even ever happened, yet it's unfortunately currently part of his record."
The Florida Board of Executive Clemency's final vote on Morrison's pardon will go down December 9, shortly before members Crist, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, Attorney General Bill McCollum, and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson ALL leave office.
It's kinda impossible not to imagine the Lizard King looking down, shaking his shaggy, bearded head at the absurdity of it all, and giggling a bit at Governor Charlie's spray-on tan.
