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April 3, 2020

Sean Lennon reams the media for their irresponsible coverage of China

By Andrea Widburg

Many older rock stars who managed to survive the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s became Born Again Christians.  Ringo Starr, Gloria Gaynor, Little Richard, MC Hammer, and Dion (Dion DeMucci of Dion and the Belmonts) are just a few.  Had he lived long enough, John Lennon might have joined that roster.

The Beatles' journey through fame taught them some conservative lessons.  George Harrison wrote 1966's "Taxman" because, as he later said, "'Taxman' was when I first realized that, even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes.  It was and still is typical."

By 1968, having watched the 1960s from a front-row seat, John Lennon was penning "Revolution," an attack on the violent, Marxist drift of the soft leftism that all the 1960s rockers had embraced.  The song was especially hard on the leftists' passion for Chairman Mao.  Lennon later said his lines about Mao — "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain't gonna make with anyone anyhow" — were the most important part of the song's lyrics.

Despite an almost innate conservatism, Lennon's song "God," written in 1970, claimed he no longer believed in Jesus.  One year later, he wrote "Imagine," one of the more stupid "one world/no religion" songs that came out of the West's 1960s cultural revolution.

After that, though, Lennon went underground.  Worn out by celebrity, Lennon hunkered down and became a house husband.  Always a searcher, he abandoned George Harrison's Eastern mysticism and worked his way through various occult practices.  What fascinated him most, though, was Christianity.

Already in 1972, he'd written to Oral Roberts to confess his drug addiction and to ask for help through Christianity.  Through subsequent correspondence with Roberts, and watching televangelists Billy Graham and Pat Robertson, Lennon concluded that the answer to his search had been there all along.  In 1977, he even told friends he was a born-again Christian.

While at home going through this spiritual journey, Lennon was the stay-at-home dad to his and Yoko's son Sean.  Sean had the benefit of John raising him for five years.  When Sean was a little over five, Mark Chapman murdered his father.

Why this whole riff about John Lennon, a man who's been dead forty years?  First, Lennon still looms large in popular culture.  Second, his son Sean seems to have inherited his father's unexpectedly conservative tilt and his undoubted intelligence.

Those who have been following Sean Ono Lennon's Twitter feed (and I was not one) were already aware that Sean, who seems to hover between disaffected Democrat and hardcore libertarian, has no patience with woke culture or the media:

Longtime followers would also have known that Sean Lennon was closely observing the coronavirus and China's role in it.  More than that, very early on, he became disgusted by the way in which the media were trying to protect China from its responsibility for releasing what amounts to a modern plague on the world:

The above are Sean Lennon's subtle tweets.  By Wednesday, he'd absolutely had it with the media providing cover for the Chinese Communist Party and called them out:

John Lennon would have been proud of his son, who's proving to be as original a thinker as his father was.

Many older rock stars who managed to survive the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s became Born Again Christians.  Ringo Starr, Gloria Gaynor, Little Richard, MC Hammer, and Dion (Dion DeMucci of Dion and the Belmonts) are just a few.  Had he lived long enough, John Lennon might have joined that roster.

The Beatles' journey through fame taught them some conservative lessons.  George Harrison wrote 1966's "Taxman" because, as he later said, "'Taxman' was when I first realized that, even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes.  It was and still is typical."

By 1968, having watched the 1960s from a front-row seat, John Lennon was penning "Revolution," an attack on the violent, Marxist drift of the soft leftism that all the 1960s rockers had embraced.  The song was especially hard on the leftists' passion for Chairman Mao.  Lennon later said his lines about Mao — "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain't gonna make with anyone anyhow" — were the most important part of the song's lyrics.

Despite an almost innate conservatism, Lennon's song "God," written in 1970, claimed he no longer believed in Jesus.  One year later, he wrote "Imagine," one of the more stupid "one world/no religion" songs that came out of the West's 1960s cultural revolution.

After that, though, Lennon went underground.  Worn out by celebrity, Lennon hunkered down and became a house husband.  Always a searcher, he abandoned George Harrison's Eastern mysticism and worked his way through various occult practices.  What fascinated him most, though, was Christianity.

Already in 1972, he'd written to Oral Roberts to confess his drug addiction and to ask for help through Christianity.  Through subsequent correspondence with Roberts, and watching televangelists Billy Graham and Pat Robertson, Lennon concluded that the answer to his search had been there all along.  In 1977, he even told friends he was a born-again Christian.

While at home going through this spiritual journey, Lennon was the stay-at-home dad to his and Yoko's son Sean.  Sean had the benefit of John raising him for five years.  When Sean was a little over five, Mark Chapman murdered his father.

Why this whole riff about John Lennon, a man who's been dead forty years?  First, Lennon still looms large in popular culture.  Second, his son Sean seems to have inherited his father's unexpectedly conservative tilt and his undoubted intelligence.

Those who have been following Sean Ono Lennon's Twitter feed (and I was not one) were already aware that Sean, who seems to hover between disaffected Democrat and hardcore libertarian, has no patience with woke culture or the media:

Longtime followers would also have known that Sean Lennon was closely observing the coronavirus and China's role in it.  More than that, very early on, he became disgusted by the way in which the media were trying to protect China from its responsibility for releasing what amounts to a modern plague on the world:

The above are Sean Lennon's subtle tweets.  By Wednesday, he'd absolutely had it with the media providing cover for the Chinese Communist Party and called them out:

John Lennon would have been proud of his son, who's proving to be as original a thinker as his father was.