Was John Lennon Secretly Republican?
This is interesting:
John Lennon fought tirelessly in the 1960s and 1970s for equal rights, social reform and racial justice, earning himself a huge FBI dossier and endless threats of deportation.
But as time went on, claims a former assistant, Lennon started leaning toward the right.
“John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter,” said Fred Seaman, who worked for Lennon in the brief period between 1979 and the singer’s 1980 assassination.
In addition to supporting Reagan, Seaman told the Toronto Sun, Lennon enjoyed getting into heated arguments with more liberal people, whom he hammered relentlessly.
“I also saw John embark in some really brutal arguments with my uncle, who’s an old-time communist,” said Seaman. “Maybe he was being provocative… but it was pretty obvious to me he had moved away from his earlier radicalism.”
Seaman continued, “[Lennon] was a very different person back in 1979 and ’80 than he’d been when he wrote ‘Imagine’. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naivete.”
Perhaps Seaman’s right — maybe Lennon did shift right, echoing a famous saying from another Brit, Winston Churchill: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
Then again, maybe Seaman’s simply using his imagination.