Rupert Murdoch will not yet have had time to do some clearing out of Leftist propagandists at the Wall Street Journal but I can offer him some tips about what to look for. For example, in Thursday’s WSJ on the front page was a column headed “Why Piano Owned By John Lennon Is Touring America”. The piece was continued at some length on page 8, a sure sign that an editor is pushing the Media Class agenda.
I wouldn’t normally waste my time reading anything about the late John Lennon, a musician of very limited talent and a philosopher and thinker who belonged in the nursery with his wife and friends. I find it hard to think of any show-biz group more over-hyped than the Beatles, but the name of the journalist caught my attention, for Ann Zimmerman seems to specialize in pro-homosexual articles. Sure enough, once I stripped off the abundant puff of the piece, there was the pro-homo message waiting for the unsuspecting reader.
The sub heading was, “It Pops Up in Places Known For Violence and Tragedy, from Waco to Virginia Tech.” In case you have doubts, Zimmerman is talking about Lennon’s piano which even has Lennon’s cigarette burns on some keys!
The opening paragraph is, “The piano on which John Lennon composed ‘Imagine’, his famous ode to peace and healing, is on a year long magical mystery tour of the U.S. with a macabre twist.”
The reporter’s enthusiasm for symbolic twaddle continues with the information that the nutmeg-colored Steinway upright, once in his (Lennon’s) Ascot country home is criss-crossing the US to appear at sites of death and destruction. Miss Zimmerman writes (surely breathlessly) that “it has popped up here and there with little fanfare, transported by white-gloved attendants in a moving truck who carefully unload the instrument to display it in parking lots, grassy fields and street corners.”
It turns out that only tiny numbers of people are drawn to this peace gesture and some are even hostile. Fortunately, Ms. Zimmerman discovers that people are usually won over on reflection. In case you wonder who is funding this expensive and ridiculous nonsense, she informs us that “British pop singer George Michael and his longtime partner, Kenny Goss, a Dallas gallery owner, are the force behind the tour”. The word ‘force’ is hers, not mine, and I suppose she is serious about its use. Mr. Michael, we are told paid $2.1 million for the piano in 2000. “He had kept it at the couple’s country home outside London, occasionally playing it for guests and using it to record some tracks on his 2004 “Patience” album.” She continues, “Messrs Michael and Goss shipped the instrument to Dallas to appear at a Goss Gallery exhibit of war photography.”
“’We thought the piano provided a great juxtaposition’ Mr. Goss said in an email from Russia, where he was accompanying Mr. Michael on a world concert tour. The success of the gallery appearance led to the countrywide tour of disquieting places.” Messrs Michael and Goss (or is it Mr. and Mrs. Michael?) call it “The Imagine Peace Project”.
Ms. Zimmerman continues, “Messrs Michael and Goss aren’t making any appearances with the piano. They chose Caroline True, a veteran music-video producer from Britain, to choreograph the instrument’s tour, which they hope to turn into a video and book with the proceeds going to a charity yet to be named.”
To quote Ms. True, “There is a sense of oddity about the whole thing – but it is odd in such a kind, quirky way”. Gasp! She later calls it a “silent peace protest of sorts.”
In case you wonder, the piano will return to the home in Dallas that George and Kenny share.
On this website we advise readers to always ask the question – “How and why did this story get into a newspaper/magazine/TV program?” This one clearly did not get on to the front page of the WSJ because it is news, important or educational. I suggest that it is intended to further the normalization of homosexuality and to make homosexuals appear endearing and concerned.
Michaels is a fairly typical Media person in that he achieved fame with a juvenile audience for songs like “I want your sex” and concerts with a heavy sexual content. He has pleaded guilty to lewd behavior with a male in a Californian public lavatory, he has had a male ‘lover’ who was a dress designer and who died of AIDS, he has been a pal of the Queen/Freddy Mercury group and Sir Elton John. If this is not enough to prove his Media credentials, he has also publicly opposed the Thatcher Government, the US/UK alliance and the war in Iraq. All of this qualifies him for positive treatment from the Media in general and the WSJ’s editors and Ms. Zimmerman.
The article tells us much about the Media Class, though unintentionally, for it highlights the trivia the Media peddles in even its ‘serious’ newspapers, it reveals the empty symbolic and shallow political posturing that so fascinates its people, their endless quest for headlines, their addiction to gestures that require little effort, the wealth that these people have and spend on themselves and their hypocrisy. The treatment of Lennon has a quasi-religious element and the piano is an equivalent of the Turin Shroud.
Michaels and his partner, who both have drug addiction problems and occasional bouts of depression, could have donated money direct to some charities and left the piano at home, thus saving a carbon footprint. But Media people can never pass up opportunities for expensive gestures, can they?
My partner (not a sexual one I hasten to add, but using ‘partner’ in its traditional sense!) Mr. Radical has suggested that it might be more appropriate to send the piano and Mr. and Mrs. Michaels to Baghdad, Kabul, Darfur and even Oakland, California (scene of 4 shooting deaths in the last few days) to bring about some reflections on peace. I think this is an excellent idea, though I would suggest that Ms. True, in her white gloves and Ms. Zimmerman should also join the tour to choreograph and make the video and to report back to us.
I have been writing on this website for some time that here in mid-California we have had no evidence of Al’s global warming. Today, after a pleasantly warm morning, the day has turned distinctly cool. I am not complaining but I worry that my little bits of anecdotal evidence might undermine Al’s credibility! It turns out that my observations have been on the mark, for in a local newspaper on Saturday it was reported that “temperatures in the East Bay have been cooler than average this summer and much cooler than last summer. Livermore’s average high temperature in July for instance, was 86 this year; 3 degrees cooler than the historical average the National Weather Service reported”. We are now into August and time is running out for record breaking heat. Of course, it could still happen, but I shall continue to rely on my lying eyes rather than on the reports of the UN, the Hollywood crowd, the EU experts, the anti-business Leftists and Old Al.