American Conservative’s Jordan Micheal Smith:  

In the last major interview Lennon gave, to Playboy in late 1980 (and later released unedited as a book, All We Are Saying), he and Yoko Ono offered opinions that can fairly be described as chastened, jaded, even provincial. …

When it was pointed out that a Beatles reunion could possibly raise $200 million for a poverty-stricken country in South America, Lennon had no time for it. “You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles.” It’s a critique of foreign aid readers of P.T. Bauer would be familiar with. “You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I’m not ready for it.”

This was not the ’60s revolutionary who hung out with Yippies and Black Panthers. Not only did Lennon dismiss his earlier efforts, he rejected the entire idea of social change through political action. “I have never voted for anybody, anytime, ever,” he said. “Even at my most so-called political. I have never registered and I never will. It’s going to make a lot of people upset, but that’s too bad.”

“I dabbled in so-called politics in the late Sixties and Seventies more out of guilt than anything,” he revealed. “Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face, to prove I’m one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts.” …

Nothing seems less like the popular idea of Lennon, but there was more. In his definitive song, “Imagine”—Yoko Ono has said its lyrics express “just what John believed”—he famously dreams of a world with “no possessions.” The mature Lennon explicitly disavowed such naïve sentiments:

I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell—if that’s a paradox, then I’m a socialist. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. … Because I thought money was equated with sin. I don’t know. I think I got over it, because I either have to put up or shut up, you know. If I’m going to be a monk with nothing, do it. Otherwise, if I am going to try and make money, make it. Money itself isn’t the root of all evil.

The man who famously called for imagining a world with “No religion” also jettisoned his anti-theism. “People got the image I was anti-Christ or antireligion,” he said. “I’m not at all. I’m a most religious fellow. I’m religious in the sense of admitting there is more to it than meets the eye. I’m certainly not an atheist.”

Even more shocking to the idea of Lennon as a secular leftist, or a deep thinker, the man rejected evolution. “Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way,” he insisted. “That’s another piece of garbage. What the hell’s it based on? We couldn’t’ve come from anything—fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don’t believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren’t monkeys changing into men now? It’s absolute garbage.”

According to the American Conservative, Lennon never became a Reagan Democrat, which is pretty much what Fred Seaman, a Lennon assistant, said happened in the article making its way around the news cycle today. But it looks as though that might be more of a conclusion the American Conservative author comes to, as opposed to something Lennon actually said. 

We do have more developing on this story, however. 

Stay tuned…

Now the research was immediately condemned by sex educators, who believe this finding can only lead to unprotected sex, pregnancy, STD’s and tedious play dates at McDonalds. The professor, however, stood strong and said: “Evolution is not politically correct… there is actually only one [sexual behavior] that is consistently associated with better physical and mental health and that is the one… favoured by evolution.”

Of course he said this all with a delightful Scottish accent, which made it more endearing. But I get it: because unprotected sex boosts your chance of reproduction, and reproduction is the name of the evolutionary game – then you, biologically, feel better about it. Which makes sense, I guess. But there’s more to it than that, I’d say.

For one: perhaps you feel better not using the condom, because it feels better not using the condom! Of course that feeling of well-being dissipates shortly after you realize you didn’t wear a condom. Then that well-being is replaced by the three stages of fear: which is fear, more fear, and still more fear.

But more importantly, the use of condoms might say more about your choice of partner – who influences your happiness more than the sex you’re having. The fact is, if you’re not using a condom, there’s a higher chance the person you’re having sex with is someone you trust – like your wife. Although the researcher disagrees with that point – my feeling is if you’re using condoms, chances are you’re more likely to be sleeping with some random chick at the office, an unstable drifter named Roy that you met at Port Authority, or in my case – a lemur. That can’t be good for evolution, either.

So in conclusion: say no to condoms, and yes to Scotland.

Welcome back everyone (welcome back Greg!)

Tonight: Eric Bolling, Shannon Bream, Tamara Holder….and….(drum roll)…

Ian McCulloch from Echo and the Bunnymen!!!!!

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More below the fold…

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Having said all that: Does anybody else find it supremely ironic that Ben Stein made a documentary about academia’s intolerance toward those who question evolutionary theory — and then a university effectively rescinded an invitation to speak? Seems to me that nothing in Ben Stein’s Expelled is more compelling evidence of the truth of his thesis than that.

Incidentally, after a cursory search I discovered that the 2006 University of Vermont commencement featured Gustavo Esteva. From Vermont’s own press release: “A strong voice for indigenous people, campesinos, and urban migrants, the core of Esteva’s thought is a challenge to the validity of social systems that subordinate traditional community values and institutions to the priorities of the global marketplace.”

Hmm, traditional community values. You mean, like creationism? Funny how traditional values are cool with academics if they’re swathed in exotic otherness. But put a Western face on them, and they become unacceptable.