Remember Love

This Christmas I find myself, like every Christmas, thinking about peace on earth. I also find myself thinking about John Lennon, who was cut down in his prime 26 years ago, just before Christmas.
Heres a review of the film "The US vs John Lennon, in the UK online rag the Independant.
It is followed by my response:
Click here to read the review online.

Reviewed by Anthony Quinn
Published: 08 December 2006
"Even as a lifelong devotee of John Lennon's music, I would have to concede that the man himself really did talk the most prodigious amount of balls. This much is confirmed in the course of The US vs John Lennon, a documentary that seeks to lionise him as peace activist and spokesman for a generation, but inadvertently has the effect of making him look a pious, publicity-crazed bore. Film-makers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld concentrate on Lennon's life in the aftermath of The Beatles' break-up in 1970, when he and Yoko Ono moved to New York and established themselves as gurus of the counterculture. Ever keen to play the rebel, Lennon spoke vociferously on behalf of the anti-Vietnam movement and black radicalism, or staged publicity stunts like his notorious "bed-in" for peace. The film interleaves contemporary news footage with a selection of talking heads - Walter Cronkite, Angela Davis, Carl Bernstein, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky et al - to reminisce about the political and social convulsions of late-Sixties and early-Seventies America. It is the thesis of Leaf and Scheinfeld that Lennon's involvement in this revolutionary spirit so rattled the likes of Nixon and FBI boss J Edgar Hoover that he was secretly declared an enemy of the state and put under surveillance. No hard evidence of this is brought to light, but the merest suspicion of it supposedly underpins the idea of Lennon as one of the unacknowledged legislators of the world, a role he himself was happy to endorse. Indeed, the cumulative impression you would glean here is that, before Lennon, nobody had ever picked up a guitar in protest. Dylan, a hero to Lennon and his fellow Beatles, is conspicuously ignored throughout. The most significant interviewee is Ono, whose approval of the film should strike an ominous note. While it would be too easy to blame her for the self-absorption of Lennon's post-Beatles career (no mention is made, incidentally, of his 18-month separation from her in 1973-74), it does appear that, artistically, they brought out the worst in each other. Ian MacDonald said it best, as he nearly always did concerning The Beatles, in his seminal book Revolution in the Head: "Under the ostensibly selfless holy foolery [Lennon and Ono] indulged in during 1968-70 was a core of exhibitionistic self-promotion. Behaving as if they had personally invented peace, they jetted round the world in first-class seats selling it at third-rate media-events. This was arrogant as well as silly, and the news media's derision was not only inevitable but, in the main, justified." Such perspective will be a tonic after watching this remorseless hagiography."


The word hagiography is used to describe this Lennon pic. I guess what John and Yoko did for peace really did suck and wasn't worth a damn. Yeah the war machine can just roll right on and it's a beautiful thing. It's a shame they ever even called attention to the stupid idea of peace at all. What a stupid idea "peace". "Behaving as if they had personally invented peace", that WAS arrogant. They should have just ignored the whole idea and went along with the war which did so much good for everyone. Just like the war today is so beautiful and good for everyone. Peace on Earth: this Christmas season flush that idea, war is a much better way to go! Right everyone? Since we can't bring Richard Nixon back lets re-elect Mr. Bush again. He is even better than Nixon and his war is a better one too. Bush and Nixon both did so much to make the world a better place, not like that dirty hippy John Lennon and his "hag" wife Yoko Ono, "artistically, they brought out the worst in each other". Now Bush and Cheney, they bring out the best in each other. Money, greed. oil. Those are the things that are really worth dying for. Not the silly idea of peace. What a stupid idea, who would die for that?
Happy Christmas, War is Over If You Want It.
David