Power battles peace in 'U.S. vs. Lennon'

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(Free-Press-Release.com) October 1, 2006 -- All he was saying was not "Give peace a chance." When John Lennon and friends sang that song, and millions of anti-war protesters took up the chant, they were also saying "power to the people" (the name of another Lennon tune). And that, strangely, worried some of the nation's top crooks: J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI, and various officials in the Nixon White House.

Make no mistake, Beatlemania was big, and we'll probably never see anything like it again. But the idea, as writer and political activist Tariq Ali says in the documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," that an artist -- even a former Fab Four mop-top -- could pose any kind of threat to the interests of the most powerful nation on earth, is patently ridiculous. Nevertheless, Lennon was put under surveillance by the FBI and -- with a gentle nudge in the form of a letter to the White House from Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond -- attempts were made to deport him, for purely political reasons, as an "undesirable alien."
"I'm just one of those faces, you know," Lennon said. "People never like me face."

When Nixon was re-elected by a landslide in 1972, Lennon was suddenly no longer a threat and the White House lost interest in him. The bureaucracy of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, however, kept churning away, and Lennon did not achieve legal victory, or his green card, until 1976. (He would live another four years.) Unclassified memos, from the FBI's Hoover to White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, showed improper political interference in an immigration proceeding. Imagine.
"The U.S. vs. John Lennon," written and directed David Leaf and John Scheinfeld, is remarkable mainly for being so tepid, given its charismatic protagonist and its setting during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American history. Even at 99 minutes, it feels padded, repetitious and unfocused, with too much time spent establishing Lennon's "rebel" bona fides and not nearly examining the preposterous (and ultimately failed) immigration case against him that stretched over 4� years.

Also, probably because Yoko Ono's cooperation was essential to getting the film made, it unfairly whitewashes Lennon, strips him of much of his complexity, and eliminates any mention of his traumatic separation from Ono in 1973 and 1974, when he lived in Los Angeles.

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Posted by JIM EMERSON

edgar hoover     john lennon     political reasons     powerful nation     white house