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Wednesday, November 26. 2008
Nothing to Get Hung About
There have been two very ridiculous items in the news most recently and they just beg comment. One I’ve commented on before, and that’s the insistence by the reactionary right that the autoworkers are to blame for the Big Three’s financial woes and the other:
The Vatican’s semi-official newspaper — its mouthpiece — L’Osservatore Romano officially pardoned John Lennon for his remarks of 42 years ago in an interview with the London Daily Standard, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first-rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”The editorial board of the Vatican mouthpiece had this to say on the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ self-titled “White” album:
“The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a ‘boast’ by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll.
“The fact remains that 38 years after breaking up, the songs of the Lennon-McCartney brand have shown an extraordinary resistance to the passage of time, becoming a source of inspiration for more than one generation of pop musicians.”
Well, that was nice, but I’m not impressed.
Had the editors read Lennon’s entire quote, in the context presented in 1966, they would see that it wasn’t a “boast,” but actually Lennon’s assessment of Beatlemania at the time — and for the day, Lennon was quite accurate. Certainly, in England at the time, young people were more interested the Beatles than religion and the band’s unprecedented success in the United States made them a worldwide phenomenon. They eclipsed Elvis Presley. It was in the United States that John Lennon and the Beatles got the worst reaction to the comment. In what was the biggest surprise and shock of my young life at the time, people actually got hung up and angry about Lennon’s words and actually burning Bealtes records in huge pyres!
My brother and I searched the news for any areas in Milwaukee where the pyres might be taking place so we could nab some of the albums for ourselves. Apparently, rabid Christians were actually buying whole catalogues out of stores just to throw into the pyres.
Of course it was only in America people got so insane. Christianity equals insanity in many and we see it nearly every day, sometimes benignly like when someone sees the face of Jesus or Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. That’s so funny! Kinda makes you hope Christianity sticks around just to fuel the humor!Then there is the not-so benign insanity, like all the death threats against Lennon and the other Beatles when the one phrase from Lennon’s interview was publicized. The irony: Lennon, for the entirety of his adult life, the focus of his art and his personality has been to promote peace and love, values promoted by Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago—values the followers of Jesus claim to promote and aspire to as well.
The violent reactions to Lennon came from people who claimed to be followers of Jesus and that’s always the way it seems to be when it comes to religion. The most fervent of followers often tend to be the most violent in their zealotry.
Their drive to convert others ranges from the simple knock on your door with some cheesy pamphlets to starving entire villages of indigenous peoples to force them to convert, to committing genocide if they don’t, to blowing up health clinics and murdering health clinic employees, to picketing the funerals of our soldiers killed in battle saying the fallen are going to Hell, and threatening to murder songwriters and other artists for what they say or create. Sort of like the Ayatollah of Iran declaring a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses.
That’s real Jesus-like. Is that really what Jesus would do? On the other hand, it is written in the Bible Jesus overturned the tables of the money-changers; Matthew 21:12: And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves …”
Like any other human, Jesus apparently had his breaking point. Still, from the view of looking back, John Lennon appears to have more in common with Jesus Christ than many of those who claim to follow Jesus. Lennon promoted peace and love and never, ever advocated murdering anyone for what they said or believed.
Makes one wonder if these lyrics in the Beatles hit, “Strawberry Fields” were an artistic response to the hysteria after Lennon’s remark was publicized: “Living is easy with eyes closed; Misunderstanding all you see; It’s getting hard to be someone, but it all works out; It doesn’t matter much to me.”
And then 14 years later John Lennon was murdered by an insane man outside Lennon’s New York home. One of the saddest days in my life.
No, I’m not impressed by the L’Osservatore Romano “forgiving” John Lennon. Not at all. John Lennon and the Beatles don’t need anything from the Vatican or any other religious organizations. The past 40 years have proven that. The Beatles are still one of the most popular music groups ever and at least as popular as Jesus Christ.And the Vatican doesn’t need to forgive Lennon. They owe the Lennons and the Beatles an apology.
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