Marta: “Yoko Ono was not very popular (or at leat not as popular as John Lennon), as far as I remember, so maybe they thought that the message would be more listened if it came from him.”

Holy cow! Yoko wasn’t just “not very popular.” She was and even still is actively hated, most primarily, accused of breaking up the Beatles. She is and has been called a shrew, a harpy, a talentless hack, grotesque, old, ugly, controlling, and so on, as well being treated to all the racial epithets you can think of and more.

Linda McCartney got off relatively easy, being called talentless and a hack, can’t sing, ugly, but at least she supported her man, misguidedly so, rather than unbecomingly giving him any guidance, direction or (gasp) disagreeing with him and changing his mind.

Yoko challenged the boys will be boys rock and roll culture. She and John had an actual personal relationship. She wasn’t a receptacle.

Linda supported it, though of course, being a female who “owned” him, she had to be considered a drag just by her presence, if not by being actively unpleasant to him or anyone else.

CS, I recall people in my high school telling each other, “I’m not your n*.” I don’t know when that essay was written; I was in high school from 1974 to 1977.

the d) one, the one about Beatles’ and Lennon music, frankly is quite pathetic. Not only because Lennon and McCartney always declared their ammiration and love for black artists, like Little Richard, their idol when they were kids. But mostly because this sense of propery, of racial (?!) property in arts and specially in music is meaningless, ’cause music has always been a mix of different cultures, instruments, and people. We can’t accuse Picasso of stealing african art!

(sorry for my english, it’s not my native language)

Yoko doesn’t always defer to John. I watched a documentary in which he and Yoko were speaking with the media on numerous occasisions. In one instance, Yoko and John each had microphones in front of them, but the listener could only hear John speaking. I got the impression that, although she obviously had a lot to say, the media wasn’t interested in her message because she wasn’t the superstar, and that they’d turned her microphone down- or even off.

As for the rest of the post … I second everything the Village Idiot wrote.

He lived during an intense time of change and had grown up before the Civil Rights movement began, so his background was one where that and other racially or sexually disparaging words were used very casually by a great many people. Lennon was very effective at shocking the conscience of people who wouldn’t ordinarily think about such issues, so I think he’s due a lot of credit for furthering progressive causes in general, including civil and women’s rights.

It also sounds to me like he got the idea for the song after talking to the Chairman of the Black Caucus who suggested it’s expanded meaning, not Lennon. Some may find him an annoying hipster but I think that’s way off base and probably just a ploy to seem like an even hipper hipster because they can dis Lennon (it’s ok to use the word ‘dis’ when talking about hipsters). However, I really think people in general are a little bit nicer to each other because of the publicity stunts and songs and speaking out that John and Yoko did (before John was murdered, ironically).

The comment “And yes, where does that leave black women? I guess we’re the nigger niggers of the world?” just means someone took the metaphor too far, I mean c’mon…

My only real point is that Lennon was a stepping stone between one time and another, and criticizing the words he spoke then from the perspective of today is extremely unfair and points to a basic ignorance of what he was all about.

> Ono does almost no talking, deferring to Lennon.

Well, after all it’s *his* song. And Yoko Ono was not very popular (or at leat not as popular as John Lennon), as far as I remember, so maybe they thought that the message would be more listened if it came from him.