Mea Culpa, John Lennon?

Mea Culpa, John Lennon?

There’s a report afoot that the first Beatle to die, John Winston Ono Lennon, Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, MBA division, was ”a closet Republican” who admired Ronald Reagan, didn’t care for Jimmy Carter, and by the time of his death was embarrassed over how politically naive he had been earlier in life.

If the report, based on a very authoritative source, Lennon’s last personal assistant, Fred Seaman, is true I would have to retract much of what I wrote in “John Lennon, Flawed Man in Life, Demigod in Death.” (http://bit.ly/kHAVTx)

I still can’t retract everything in that article. John Lennon was indeed a deeply-flawed human being and he was elevated to a grossly exaggerrated status of a virtual god-like figure following his fatal shooting by the deranged Mark David Chapman outside The Dakota on the fateful evening of December 8, 1980.

Lennon’s life was snuffed out at the tender age of 40 years.

I had written in “John Lennon . . .” that the singer-composer was “Jealous, possessive, violent, angry, chauvinistic, abusive, adulterous, prideful, arrogant defender of a twice-convicted murderer, buddy to the Chicago Seven and violent Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Angela Davis, and Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4928)

John Lennon, Flawed Man in Life, Demigod in Death

John Lennon, Flawed Man in Life, Demigod in Death

“And this man has now become a god?” (Cassius, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, I, ii)

To anyone who has until now doubted that Western civilization has been inexorably sliding into history’s toilet, this should reassure you that you are quite correct and that we are on our last, creaky legs.

Jealous, possessive, violent, angry, chauvinistic, abusive, adulterous, prideful, arrogant defender of a twice-convicted murderer, buddy to the Chicago Seven and violent Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Angela Davis, and Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, Marxist sympathizer, confirmed druggie object of a deportation attempt in the U.S. as a persona non grata, John Lennon has now become a virtual saint.

No one as yet, to my knowledge, has suggested this deeply-flawed, wife-beating, borderline seditionist, drug-addled man “is now become a god,” except in the eyes of his celeb-fixated idolators who would, if they could, elevate him to that status in the crowded pantheon of entertainers if not crown him superior to all those lesser gods.

It’s startling to witness how death and 30 years can induce such absurd, widespread mania.

It’s never nice to speak ill of the dead, although liberals rarely if ever abide by that restriction and which is why I’ll wait a while to comment on Elizabeth Edwards’ recent demise but, when mindless adulation devolves into bizarre devotion, something need be said before the whole of humanity succumbs to mass idolatry.

Chief Beatle, John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE, was shot to death on December 8, 1980 by a deranged Mark David Chapman while in the company of his second wife, Yoko Ono, as they approached the main entrance of their residence, The Dakota, in New York City.

Ms. Ono, second wife to Lennon whom he called “mother,” is a Japanese artist, musician, and agitator with a history of unseemly associations in her own right but that’s a subject of a future analysis.

It should be noted that Lennon’s MBE title, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2985)