Imagine all the morons
by digby
So John Lennon was supposedly a closet Reagan fan. Sure he was.
A guy named Fred Seaman is all over the conservative blogs today for a new documentary in which he claims that John Lennon was “a closet Republican” at the time he was shot. This seems unlikely.
First of all, who is Fred Seaman? He’d been a personal assistant to John and Yoko at the Dakota in the late seventies, but he’s also a convicted criminal. He was found guilty of stealing John Lennon’s personal belongings, including his diaries, after Lennon had been killed. He was sentenced to five years probation.
You might say that weakens his credibility.
What exactly were Lennon’s political views at the end of 1980? Late that November, Lennon spoke out on behalf of striking workers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. (The story is told in my book Come Together: John Lennon in His Time.) The strike was against Japan Foods Corporation, a subsidiary of the Japanese multinational Kikkoman, best known for its soy sauce. The US workers, primarily Japanese, were members of the Teamsters. In LA and San Francisco, they went on strike for higher wages. The shop steward of the LA local, Shinya Ono, persuaded John and Yoko to make a public statement addressed to the striking workers:
“We are with you in spirit.… In this beautiful country where democracy is the very foundation of its constitution, it is sad that we have to still fight for equal rights and equal pay for the citizens. Boycott it must be, if it is the only way to bring justice and restore the dignity of the constitution for the sake of all citizens of the US and their children.
“Peace and love, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York City, December, 1980.”
That was Lennon’s last written political statement. It doesn’t seem to be the work of a “closet Republican.”
Well who knows? It’s certainly believable that the man who wrote “Give Peace a Chance” would have been enamored of the man who called the Soviet Union an evil empire.
But perhaps this is a good time to reveal that I have it on excellent authority that Ronald Reagan and Michael Deaver were lovers for more than 40 years. They aren’t around anymore to dispute it but you can believe me because a friend of a friend told me about it.
See how easy that is?
What’s truly pathetic is how desperate these sad people are to have some rock icon other than Ted Nugent as their own. Maybe they should see if David Mamet plays the banjo.
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