Douglas Mercer
January 12 2025
That’s one for you
Nineteen for me
Because I’m the tax man
Lennon was assassinated by a Salinger fanatic in December 1980, weeks after Reagan was elected. Four months later Reagan was nearly assassinated by a Salinger fanatic. Reagan and Lennon had met at a football game in Los Angeles in 1974 and got on quite well as befits two old entertainers.
Lennon struggled for seven years to become an American citizen. When he finally got his Permanent Green Card Yoko bought him a diamond flag pin for 75,000 dollars. Lennon often spoke of the fact that this was a free country and that this liberty was enshrined in our constitution and that freedom and free speech was the American way. Lennon was slated to become an American citizen in 1982.
Lennon famously came out of hiding to attend the Inaugural of Jimmy Carter in January 1977. But by the end of his life Lennon had soured on Carter and in late November 1980 told Fred Seaman that if he had been a citizen he would have voted for Reagan.
One theory of his assassination was that Lennon seemed to be emerging from his cocoon and the “right wingers” did not want the notoriously loud mouthed Lennon attacking America from the view point of a citizen. In 1986 Ken Kesey lamented that Lennon had not survived to attack all the “greed heads.” But Lennon was a man who would go into a department store and with his American Express Gold Card spend 50,000 dollars and then have his servants dump what he bought into one of the 27 rooms he had at the Dakota and never look at it again. In one of his final songs he advocated that one should serve oneself, that no one is going to do for you. He believed that greed was good.
Had he survived and had he endorsed Reagan all hell would have broken loose. Indeed, had he come out in favor of sodomizing small children it would have been considerably less of a scandal.
It’s clean up time.
Patriotism
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- Posts: 10474
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Re: Patriotism
The most fascinating episode, however, involved Lennon and President Ronald Reagan, then governor of California. Each figure embodied part of the cultural divide of the time, Lennon the protesting pacifist pop star, Reagan the hard-line conservative leader. Gifford had invited them to appear on the same show in the early '70s, assuming Lennon would be a no-show.
To Gifford's surprise, he looked over his shoulder during the broadcast and spotted the two waiting together.
"Governor Reagan had his arm around John Lennon and he was explaining American football to him," Gifford said. "Only on 'Monday Night Football' would you get those two guys, who were poles apart, united."
Their appearance prompted some swift maneuvering by Cosell, who initially planned to interview Reagan but anticipated the audience's keener interest in Lennon.
Gifford recalled Cosell abruptly stating, "You take the governor and I'll take the Beatle."
To Gifford's surprise, he looked over his shoulder during the broadcast and spotted the two waiting together.
"Governor Reagan had his arm around John Lennon and he was explaining American football to him," Gifford said. "Only on 'Monday Night Football' would you get those two guys, who were poles apart, united."
Their appearance prompted some swift maneuvering by Cosell, who initially planned to interview Reagan but anticipated the audience's keener interest in Lennon.
Gifford recalled Cosell abruptly stating, "You take the governor and I'll take the Beatle."