The Who faces child porn anger
2010-02-05 13:32
Fort Lauderdale - The Who gave an energetic, acoustic preview of Sunday's Super Bowl football championship halftime show, but things turned serious when Pete Townshend defended himself against critics who say he should not be performing.
Townshend was arrested in 2003 in Britain as part of a child pornography sting but later cleared. He accessed a website containing child pornography but said it was for research for his own campaign against child porn. He was required to register as a sex offender, despite being cleared.
Because of that, groups like Protect Our Children have protested the choice of The Who, the legendary group featuring Townshend and Roger Daltrey, to perform at the Super Bowl championship show.
But Townshend said he has been a children's advocate for decades and alluded to his own confession of being abused as a child.
"For a family that has suffered the issue of childhood abuse or anything of that sort, vigilance, common sense vigilance, is the most important thing, not vigilantism," he said. "Anybody that has any doubts about whether I should be here or not should investigate a little bit further."
Advocates uneasy
That didn’t satisfy some children's advocates.
Still, Townshend said on Thursday, "I kind of feel like we're all on the same side, I guess that's all I can really say".
The Who showed no performance anxiety as they performed three of their classic hits, Behind Blue Eyes, Pinball Wizard and Won't Get Fooled Again.
The Super Bowl is regularly America's biggest TV marketing event of the year, and last year's event had more than 98 million US viewers. The National Football League championship game is also widely viewed around the world, even in countries steeped in soccer, which normally paid scant attention to American-style football.
The Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints play in the Super Bowl in Miami this Sunday.
Both Daltry and Townshend admitted to knowing little about American football and Daltrey said he'd never been to an NFL game before.
But his lack of knowledge didn't prevent him from picking sides. He said he was partial to the New Orleans Saints because "New Orleans could use a little bit of luck".
- AP