It has already started. With the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s
death approaching, the adoration of the rocker has begun anew.
I
was a Beatles fan like just about everyone else. Bought all
their albums and have many of their tunes on CD today. I preferred
their earlier stuff and didn’t think Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band, while an innovative concept album, was as good as what
they’d been doing.
The release of the White Album, which included
barkers like “Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey,
“Savoy Truffle” and “Revolution 9,” made it evident the magic was
fading.
I thought it was interesting that John, who was often
viewed as the “smart Beatle” and the musical driving force behind
the group, had a rather mediocre solo career. Maybe it was changes
in his personal life or drugs or boredom or something, but the quality
of most of John’s work after the Beatles’ breakup was unexceptional.
Lennon
became active in the antiwar movement. His liberal views conferred
on him an intellectual patina as well as a widespread sense that he
spoke for most, if not all, young people.
Even after all these
years, that assumption remains. Last Friday NBC’s Dateline centered
on Mark Chapman, who killed Lennon. The program’s Web site referred
to “that fateful day when a generation’s voice was silenced.”
I
can’t speak for all Baby Boomers obviously, but Lennon certainly wasn’t
my voice. As an example, he’s quoted:
Lennon and the antiwar movement’s emphasis on peace at any price meant, to many of us, acquiescence and surrender to Communism. I’m not alone in believing the antiwar crowd gave aid and comfort to enemies while they killed our soldiers. People displaying peace signs encouraged Communist North Vietnam to hang in there until it prevailed.
So, no, I don’t see how Dateline
can accurately characterize Lennon as a generation’s voice.
Nor
can I fathom how John’s death was “one of the most heinous crimes
of the century.” That’s how Dateline’s Hoda Kotb characterized
it.
John Lennon’s murder, like most murders, was tragic. Classifying it as “one of the most heinous crimes of the century,”
though, is over the top.
Millions of people were killed were
killed by Mao. Millions of people were killed by Stalin. Millions of people were killed by Hitler.
More than a million
people died in Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields. Hundreds
of thousands died at the hands of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Hundreds of thousands died in the Rwanda civil war. Saddam Hussein
is responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands.
And what
of the more than 900 who died in 1978 at the hands of Leftist “Reverend”
Jim Jones in Guyana?
In this century there were Leopold and Loeb,
Susan Smith, Charles Manson, Andrew Cunanan, Timothy McVeigh, Dennis
Rader, Charles Whitman, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer
and Charles Starkweather.
There were Columbine, Heaven’s Gate,
the Zebra Killers, the Tylenol murders, the Birmingham church bombing
and the Atlanta youth murders. The list could go on and on.
So
how in the world can John Lennon’s murder possibly be considered one
of the most heinous crimes of the century? It can’t.
John
Lennon, contrary to what we’ll be hearing and reading for the next
couple of weeks, isn’t worthy of idolatry. Like the rest of
us, he was a struggling mortal trying to make sense of this world. He was a man of contradictions. What else could a guy who wrote
of imagining a world with no possessions while being chauffeured in
a Rolls Royce limousine be?
He died too young and I wish he were
alive. I think he was intellectually honest enough that he’d
have recognized some of his own mistakes.
Let’s appreciate him
for what he was: A talented guy who, with the other Beatles, gave
us a lot of enjoyable music that we’re still listening to. But
I wish the mainstream media would put away the incense.
John
himself would be the first to keep his life and times in perspective.
Copyright
© 2005 Michael M. Bates
This appears in the November 24, 2005 Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter. Mike Bates is the author of Right Angles and Other Obstinate Truths.
