Will the next John Lennon please stand up?

I just finished watching “The US vs. John Lennon.” I have a pretty predictable reaction whenever I watch video of John Lennon for more than five minutes: I start to get depressed, and I cry. In fact, I recall that the one and a half minute preview of this movie was enough to make me sniffly. After finishing this, I find myself wondering why a documentary about his life would affect me so strongly, and I think that above the obvious tragedy of his murder, there is a sense of loss about the promise of the era and strength his political activism represented. I see the period of the sixties and early seventies as one where so much progress came so close to happening…and then it slipped away. Reagan was elected president. Clinton—nominally of Lennon’s idealistic, progressive generation—was as deeply embedded in the imperialistic (“globalization”) project as any Republican. And I obviously don’t need to even get started with Bush (and if I do, please, understand that you have wandered onto the wrong blog).

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