Imagine
I recall lying on my bed at prep school listening to the Monday Night Football broadcast of the Dolphins-Patriots game from the Orange Bowl on this date in 1980. At the time I was a huge Dolphins fan. Listening to the game after lights out was forbidden, but I was a rebel. Ha!
I recall distinctly Howard Cosell’s announcement that John Lennon had been killed.
This, we have to say it, remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead … on … arrival.
WKRP had a wonderful episode that featured Lennon’s Imagine. It was all about radio censorship. Apparently, YouTube pulls any clips of this, so the transcript will have to do.
Mr Carlson: I had one of my disc jockeys, Dr Johnny Fever, give me the lyrics to a song. He wants to know if you’d let him play that song on the air.
Dr Bob, reading: “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine no possessions? Imagine all the peple sharing all the world?” That sounds like communism to me, if there’s no heaven, no religion and, I assume, no God.
Mr Carlson: There’s not an obscene word in here.
Dr Bob: Not the way I see it.
Mr Carlson: Does it go on your list?
Dr Bob: Arthur, this is typical of the kind of secular, liberal humanist point of view that gluts our airwaves.
Mr Carlson: Yeah, but we’re not talking obscenities here anymore, Bob, we’re talking about ideas - political, philosophical ideas! First you censor a word, and then you censor the ideas.
Dr Bob: The idea is man-centered, not God-centered. Man is an animal. The Bible tells us to put our reliance in God, not in our fellow mortals. Arthur, this song says there’s no heaven.
Mr Carlson: Ah. No, it says just imagine there’s no heaven.
Dr Bob: That’s blasphemy.
Mr Carlson: On the list or not?
Dr Bob: I have no choice but to say on.
Mr Carlson: That decision was made by one man.
Also blogged on this date . . .
- Huckabee's Nanny State - 2007
- Carmen, R.I.P. - 2007
- Fatherhood . . . - 2007
- WherIGo - 2006
- It's All Over - 2005
- MIL in Green Acres - 2004
Tags: censorship, Football, Lennon, television