Invisible Adjunct

You Can Send Him Dead Flowers

Well when you're sitting there in your silk upholstered chair
Talkin' to some rich folk that you know
Well I hope you won't see me in my ragged company
Well, you know I could never be alone

-- M. Jagger/K. Richards, "Dead Flowers"

Mick Jagger has finally been knighted. This story predictably plays off the seeming paradox of the icon of rebellion turned icon of establishment: "once a scourge of the British establishment," it notes, the "60-year-old rock n'roll lothario" has now "received its ultimate accolade." Apparently this perpective is shared by the "craggy-faced" Keith Richards, who "claimed [Jagger] was betraying the band's principles by accepting the honor."

I beg to differ. For the past four decades, Jagger has comported himself like the most dissolute and debauched of ancien régime aristocrats, even as he behaved like the most rationally calculating and profit-maximizing of contemporary capitalists. I think the knighthood a fitting tribute to his remarkable ability to bridge the gap between the old establishment and the new.