"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Friday, September 9, 2011

Yoko and John

Forty-five years ago today, in 1966, John Lennon met Yoko Ono.   That's not a bad point on the timeline to locate when the 1960s jumped the shark into excess and, ultimately, silliness.  


Is there a world-famous popular song that's worse than Lennon's "Imagine"?   Not to me:

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Yuck.   Beyond the communism is the almost sickeningly sweet naivete.   Nice pose if you're a millionaire rock musician living in a luxury penthouse on Central Park West.   But it makes me want to wretch.

A talented boy who was in the right place at the right time -- on the cusp of rock and roll and in a band with Paul McCartney -- and who got famous and made millions off his talent, and then, because of those millions, never had to grow up.

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