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john lennon
John Lennon Still Lives Among Us
When icons become "media friends," their impact can be unexpected and powerful.
Dec 05, 2020
Forty years ago this week, headlines screamed, "John Lennon Gunned Down by Stranger." Yet, for assassin Mark David Chapman, John Lennon was no stranger. Although he had never come within a hundred miles of the former Beatle until that winter, Chapman knew John Lennon very well; so well, in fact, he often believed that he was John Lennon.
The teenage Chapman wore his hair like Lennon's, learned to play guitar, and joined a rock group. He sang Lennon's songs over and over. Like Lennon, Chapman married an older Japanese woman. As a security guard at a Honolulu condominium, he even taped Lennon's name over his own on his ID tag. On the day he quit, Chapman signed out as "John Lennon," crossing the name out with the final stroke of his pen. The murder he was about to commit was a partial suicide.
"Although decades have passed since Lennon was murdered, my emotions remain raw."
John Lennon was killed by the sinister side of the same force that makes millions of people still mourn him and other dead media icons: a sense of personal connection to selected strangers fostered by media that simulate the sights and sounds of face-to-face interactions.
As with real-life friends, we feel bound to our "media friends," not simply because of what they have accomplished and can do but based on a more personal set of feelings about who they are--how their very "presence" in our lives affects us. The natural mental space for a hero is at a distance on some pedestal. The imagined space for a media friend is at our sides--hanging out at home, walking down a street, riding in a car.
The more we see and hear them, the more musicians, actors, sports figures, newscasters, political figures, and talk-show hosts become part of our extended network of social ties. They provide a sense of intimacy, but one without any risk of embarrassment or physical harm. Some of them are there to say, "Good morning;" others to say, "Good night." They sing in our ears as we jog. They hover near us even in the most private scenes of our lives.
We follow the personal and public dimensions of media friends, and their life stages often become key signposts we use to mark and recall periods in our own lives. Conversations among real-life friends often refer to shared media friends. Ironically, relationships with media friends often outlast our relationships with many of our actual friends, neighbors, co-workers, lovers, even spouses.
When a widely shared media friend dies unexpectedly and "before their time," the unusual nature of the relationship explodes in the public sphere. To banish the demons of grief and helplessness, thousands of people spontaneously gather in streets or parks, or hold vigils near the media friend's home or place of death.
That's what happened when John Lennon was gunned down. Strangers embraced and wept. Crowds stood in silent witness or chanted the dead hero's words or songs. Such pain is paradoxical--it feels personal yet is strengthened by the extent to which it is shared with the crowd.
Ironically, but appropriately, the media that give birth to these relationships also provide the most ritualized settings for mourning a media friend's death. Radio and television present specials, retrospectives, and commentaries. "Never before seen" photos and videos are a kind of cultural seance, extending the connection past the grave.
The final irony, then, is that in many ways, the media friend never dies. The only means through which most people came to know him or her--media images and sounds--remain available forever. When a media friend dies, the relationship is embalmed rather than destroyed. Nevertheless, the sense of loss is profound.
John Lennon was fearless in speaking about peace and justice and asking us to imagine a better world. You still can feel and hear both his presence and his painful absence at every antiwar rally, environmental action, and police brutality protest over the last forty years. Indeed, his songs are often part of the soundtracks for progressive political action.
Of course, ties to media friends are often commercially fabricated. And yet, these relationships are still very human, very caring. No analysis of these unreal, but real relationships can explain away or weaken their emotional power. We may never have seen them in the flesh, and they would never have taken note of our own deaths, but when our media friends die or are killed, we feel pain. We worry about their widowed spouses and fret over the children who have lost a parent. We dwell on ways the tragedy could have been avoided. Sometimes, we even feel partly responsible, as if we could have saved or warned them.
I understand the absurdity of many aspects of the relationships with media friends, yet I have also felt all these things. Although decades have passed since Lennon was murdered, my emotions remain raw. Yes, I never really knew him. Yes, he was not even aware of my existence. Yet I found my political voice with his help, and he has inspired millions around the world not to be silent in the face of militarism and injustice. The simple truth is, I still feel him marching beside me now--and I still miss him.
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Trump and His Teleprompter Assure America That the State of the Union Is Strong. No, Really
In reality, the opposite is true and the real news was not what was in the speech but what was swirling all around it.
Jan 31, 2018
The State of the Union is strong. I mean, President Trump didn't trip and tumble off the platform in a real life homage to Chevy Chase, or press a red Staples button on the podium and announced that he'd just launched a fleet of cruise missiles toward North Korea, or order special counsel Robert Mueller led into the House of Representatives blindfolded and in handcuffs, or gaze out toward Melania and ask for a divorce (since the state of his union is reportedly weak). As one cable TV pundit solemnly declared afterwards, "Donald Trump became president tonight." OK, actually I wrote that at 7:39 p.m., 81 minutes before the speech even began -- but we all know someone must have said that.
The truth? A teleprompter just rolled off the best speech of Donald Trump's presidency, a sniffle-punctuated litany of praise for God, the troops and mythical clean coal from America's first reality-show president. And Teleprompter Trump certainly said ... some of the right things.
He promised Democrats that he's ridiculed, such as Cryin' Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren, that he is now "extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens, of every background, color and creed." That statement explicitly excluded 800,000 "Dreamers" facing imminent deportation to nations they barely know, but the president did pledge to work for some kind of deal on immigration and to finally do something about America's crumbling infrastructure.
He also hailed the heroes of Houston's flood and the Las Vegas and congressional softball shootings -- a splendid and praiseworthy moment that nonetheless allowed the president to address those topics without mentioning climate change or America's lax gun laws, two of the many real-life problems that don't exist in Trump World. And any would-be immigration deal was undercut by his shameful willingness to demagogue a handful of murder cases to stir up xenophobia against all migrants, especially brown ones.
This, he called this "a New American Moment" -- but it sounded like an old American moment. In his speech to Congress in 2017, after all, Trump also vowed to work for an immigration deal, saying "I believe Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades." Two paragraphs later in that 2017 speech, he declared solemnly that "I will be asking Congress to approve legislation that produces a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure of the United States."
To quote the late great John Lennon: We'd all love to see the plan.
The empty repetition of things that never seem to actually happen on "Real World: Trump" seems to beg the question of whether the State of Union speech even matters. Spoiler alert: It doesn't, and that problem certainly predates the arrival of Donald Trump. Mostly, these TV events are a 1-hour litany of things that remain unattainable in the age of gridlock. The most memorable moment in my lifetime came in 1975 when Watergate had stripped away so much American pretense that Gerald Ford actually declared the State of the Union is "not good."
Forty-three years later, the real news was not what was in the speech but what was swirling all around it.
The aggrieved First Lady went to the Capitol in a separate limo, the ship that launched a thousand wagging tongues. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus boycotted the speech, not too surprising considering the president's "shithole countries" slam on Africa or his Charlottesville moral fumble, and other Democrats stayed away, like Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky who told CNN she didn't want to listen to "a sexual predator." And an adult-film star allegedly paid $130,000 not to talk about her affair was Trump was teed up to give a rebuttal on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel.
Did I mention that the State of the Union is not good, not at all? In the hours before the speech, CNN and other news outlets were reporting that Trump may refuse to give Mueller an interview about alleged campaign collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice, that he might actually fire Mueller, and that the president is about to release a slanted, classified memo aimed at tarnishing the FBI and taking down Mueller's probe. Meanwhile, the White House is refusing to implement a Russia sanctions law that passed Congress nearly unanimously -- his latest and most serious dictator move. Sen. Claire McCaskill pegged the moment for what it is: A constitutional crisis.
\u201cCongress voted 517-5 to impose sanctions on Russia. The President decides to ignore that law. Folks that is a constitutional crisis. There should be outrage in every corner of this country.\u201d— Claire McCaskill (@Claire McCaskill) 1517314592
You didn't hear anything about that constitutional crisis from the flag-draped podium last night. That would cut way too close to the truth, and we haven't had that spirit here since 1975. Where's Gerald Ford when you need him?
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Of Caesar, Guns and Trolls: The Evil that Men Do
The GOP and right wing will use any diversion to distract us from an agenda of cruelty and madness.
Jun 27, 2017
Over in New York's Central Park, just a short distance from our offices, the curtain came down last week on The Public Theater's controversial production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Controversial because the actor playing the assassinated Caesar looked and sounded like Donald Trump, right down to the overlong red necktie and clownish orange-blond nimbus of hair.
But the curtain didn't fall because of the outrage that came tumbling from the right -- including protesters heckling at a couple of the performances and death threats directed at the production's director (not to mention feverish tweets and emails from confused trolls hurled at any theatre company with the word "Shakespeare" in its name).
Nor did it occur because two of The Public Theatre's corporate donors, Bank of America and Delta Air Lines, pulled their sponsorship of the show, a gutless move of appeasement from two businesses, banking and air travel, so well known these days for their dazzling records of customer satisfaction. (Another company, American Express, didn't yank its cash from The Public but tweeted that its money doesn't fund Shakespeare in the Park "nor do we condone the interpretation of the Julius Caesar play.")
No, the fact is, Julius Caesar always was scheduled to end the night that it did. That was to make way for the summer's second Shakespeare in the Park production -- A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Gentle readers will recall that this is the Shakespeare play in which, among a great many other things, a knavish sprite named Puck turns a man into an ass. Such an act once seemed like magic, but given today's political climate, the turning of men into asses has become the rule rather than the exception.
Witness the aforementioned kneejerk reaction of the right, so quick to accuse the left of behaving like snowflakes but themselves so hypersensitive to even the mildest heat that they melt as fast as Frosty the Snowman -- that is, if he was a whiny Fox or talk radio host instead of a jolly happy soul.
We've established before that this is not a crowd that embraces a thoroughgoing knowledge of history in general, and it's probably fair to assume a knowledge of theatrical history not at all. Elsewise they might realize that Julius Caesar is not a play that celebrates political violence but loudly condemns it.
In an email, The Public's artistic director (and director of Julius Caesar) Oskar Eustis wrote:
"Those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save. For over 400 years, Shakespeare's play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park."
Back in the day, Queen Elizabeth I herself recognized that the playwright's scripts often were thinly veiled depictions of the current political scene in Britain and even of herself. Apparently, she had a thicker skin than the gang at Delta Air Lines or Bank of America -- she kept encouraging Shakespeare with money from the royal purse.
Julius Caesar in particular has always been a play lending itself to parallels with contemporary politics. George Washington hosted an amateur production in Philadelphia during the first full year of his presidency. He didn't seem to take offense. Orson Welles directed and played Brutus in a 1937 staging that drew parallels with the rise of fascism in Europe, even recreating the infamous "Cathedral of Light" at Hitler's Nuremburg rallies.
For the last few years, The Acting Company has been touring the country with a version in which Caesar bears a close resemblance to Barack Obama -- no one has protested. And ever since Trump started to dominate the electoral landscape, several productions have used Julius Caesar as a metaphor for the debilitating illness that pervades our body politic.
Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro recently wrote:
"As long as politicians resemble Caesar and as long as their opponents seek to justify their overthrow, 'Julius Caesar' will continue to matter...
"It is the mark of a tolerant society that we don't try to shut down the expression of words or viewpoints that some might find disagreeable, least of all Shakespeare's, whose works we all share.
"We rely on newspapers to learn what is happening in the world. But we turn to productions of Shakespeare to make sense of it."
But none of this stopped the trolls of the right from throwing a major-league hissy about the show, even if very few of them actually attended a performance. Much of the consternation was based on a video of the play's assassination scene that went viral.
Some, Sean Hannity among them, even suggested that the recent wounding of House majority whip Steve Scalise and four others at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, somehow was linked to the production of Julius Caesar. "The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands!" screamed one of those who disrupted a performance. And the president's son, Donald Jr., retweeted conservative commentator Harlan Hill's comment that the shootings were "EXACTLY why we took issue with NY elites glorifying the assassination of our president."
This was and is opportunistic sophistry, an attempt to use tragedy to distract by aiming a fallacious attack at "elites" and the left. The production of Julius Caesar should no more be condemned for its alleged connection to an act of senseless violence than The Catcher in the Rye should be banned because John Lennon's assassin Mark David Chapman was obsessed with the book.
The attack on Scalise and the others was the act of a deeply disturbed man who had made anti-Trump statements on Facebook and elsewhere. And there's no denying that it took place in an atmosphere of elevated hate speech from right and left -- but face it, mostly from the right -- and violence that has only gotten worse since the election, aggravated by the man now president who egged on his supporters at splenetic campaign rallies.
But let's talk about what also really needs discussing. Not just a production of a classic play that offended some, or the unreasoned words and actions of far too many, including men and women in Congress and the White House.
Since we're talking about the freedom to speak out, let's speak out about guns.
For one, given the mental state of the man accused with the Scalise shooting why was he allowed to have weapons? As my colleague Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times wrote:
"In a country with sensible and intelligent firearms laws, there's no way a person with the history of domestic violence of James Hodgkinson, who has been identified as the shooter, would be permitted anywhere near the weapons he was carrying on June 14 -- and which reportedly he obtained legally."
Too soon? Let's pray for Steve Scalise's continued recovery but not forget his A+ rating from the National Rifle Association or, say, his opposition to stricter gun laws after 26 died in the Sandy Hook shootings of 2014. Hiltzik noted:
"To say Scalise deserves to share blame for this situation is not to say that he deserves the punishment of a grave injury. But nor is this an occasion to ignore the policies he espouses and their relationship to the June 14 event and its aftermath...
"Among the bills he has cosponsored is the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, a 2011 measure that would have allowed anyone with a valid state-issued concealed firearm permit to carry a concealed firearm in any other state that issues concealed firearm permits, regardless of the other states' standards for issuing those permits. On Jan. 6, 2016, Scalise could be seen on CNN misrepresenting, and then assailing, President Obama's day-old executive order designed to tighten the rules on background checks of gun buyers."
Counting the Scalise incident, according to the website Mass Shooting Tracker, as of June 25, 2017, so far this year there have been 211 mass shootings in the United States. Guns have killed more than 6,800 in America this year; 13,500 have been wounded, according to Chelsea Parsons, vice president of guns and crime policy at the Center for American Progress. In a recent op-ed, Parsons pointed out out the gun fatality rate in this country is 25 times greater than in other high-income countries.
And yes, as the argument goes, more people might have died in Alexandria if Scalise had not had armed police protection with him, but they were trained professionals, not the amateurs -- including members of Congress -- who want to run around with concealed carry permits and handguns wherever they choose.
But that's what the GOP wants. Jonathan Martin reported at The New York Times:
"The Republican majorities on Capitol Hill have blocked every attempt to enact significant gun control legislation, most recently after the massacre of 49 people in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub last June. Measures to block people on the federal terrorism watch list from buying weapons and to close background-check loopholes failed in the Senate.
"And that was before President Trump was elected with far more help from the National Rifle Association than Mitt Romney got in 2012. Mr. Trump received more money from the NRA than any other outside group."
The counterintuitive argument that the answer to guns is more guns is madness. As Marc Antony says in Julius Caesar, during his famous oration at the funeral of the murdered leader, "O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason."
Too soon?
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