Honors for the last Beatle

Last Dec. 28, 2011 I sat through a portion of a dreary “honors” ceremony at Kennedy Center.  Why did I subject myself to such an interminable evening?   I wanted to hear what would be said about Paul McCartney, last of the “Beatles,” inasmuch as they were thrust upon our society with a resounding bang and it was all downhill from there!  I couldn’t imagine why he should be honored in the U.S. at the supposedly prestigious Kennedy Center. What has he contributed to upgrade our society?

On their first  visit to the U.S. in 1964, their press officer, Derek Taylor, described them as,  “incredible, absolutely incredible,...Here are these four boys from Liverpool.  They’re rude, they’re profane, they’re vulgar, and they’ve taken over the world.  It’s as if they had founded a new religion.  They’re completely anti-Christ.  I mean, I am anti-Christ as well, but they’re so anti-Christ, they shock me, which isn’t an easy thing.”  

So what changed to bring out an  impressive crowd, suitably garbed in black tie?  What did this quartet of rowdies do to rate the riches, garnishments, plaudits they received from the thousands of teen-agers and young adults in which they basked?

That night I hoped in vain McCartney might be among the early nominees, but  apparently he was last, although I can’t be sure whether anyone followed him or whether he was, indeed, the apex! because I turned it off after his introduction by which time I was quite tired of the whole thing.  He sat next to the Obamas in a side balcony, where his  thin, dyed reddish tresses showed up quite clearly in the overhead spotlight.  The Obamas, I heard,  were going on vacation and  I squelched the thought when are they NOT on vacation? 

Clearly the whole event was designed to honor those of the left in what  remains of our so-called cultural circles. One featured item was Jerry Herman’s La Cage aux Folle,  an early entry years ago in the homosexual battle for equal rights as if these afflicted people were a special race of some kind.  The plot was a glamorized story of two males, living together, raising a straight son. Kind of a remake of Auntie Mame, and was an early not-so subtle weapon in the sex war which  began after the publication of the many-flawed Kinsey Report.  Just as in Auntie Mame a huge crucifix was mounted on the back wall for the second act.  And guess who came to laud the production?  Angela Lansbury.  I liked her in Auntie Mame, but I didn’t on December 28, 2010!

Alec Baldwin apparently was practicing for his next job as a narrator for musical events, praised McCartney, saying he had “married rock and roll to beauty, and created many of our favorite songs,” and marveled at him as “ the great musical adventure of the 20th Century.”   Nothing said, however, about the Beatles’ contribution to the downgrading of American culture, a decline both sad and deplorable.

All this  adulation pored out upon this icon recalled to mind Dr. David Noebel’s revelations about rock and roll music, and its principal source:   Lenin’s desire to “rework culture,” to build “a proletarian (Communist) culture,”  for which the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians was formed to carry on the war.  “The comrades were assured that classical music was ’bourgeois,’ whereas folk music was the music of the ‘exploited and oppressed classes.’“ 

Dr. Noebel said the goal was “the extension of proletarian Communist influence …to direct …creative talents toward socialist upbuilding.’”  and quotes a columnist lauding the Beatles “have gone further than all the contemporary folk song writers in that they are not so obvious in their philosophy.” (from Marxist Minstrels, 1974, A Handbook on Communist Subversion of Music). Dr. Noebel pointed out their “drenched-in-drugs album, ‘Sgt Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ featured a montage of ‘faces crowding about themselves.  Ringo frankly admits, ‘We just thought we would like to put together a lot of people we like and admire.’  Among these was Karl Marx.’” (same source)

So notorious did this quartet of demoralizing songsters become,  the Saturday Evening Post was moved to write of the decline of the British Empire and charged the Beatles as “antic anesthetists.”  That was bad enough but in 1964 the British Government handed the Beatles an MBE (British Empire Award) and says the Queen announced this on her birthday.  Dr. Noebel noted in time past “such honors came to men and women who had accomplished a great deal in the field of arts, letters, business, science and medicine, i.e., men and women had a spent a lifetime working to make something of themselves and to contribute to the welfare and knowledge of their fellowmen.” 

Consequently, Dr. Noebel relates, medals were returned –“poured back to the Queen in protest from all over the world.”  One protester returned “all 12 of his medals.  This man had won all his awards in WWI and WWII, and the Afghan Campaign.”  He wrote a letter of protest along with them and removed the Labor Party from his will!

John Lennon so reverently revered by the American press, especially since his assassination, was devoted to the concepts of revolution which apparently appeared in many of their songs – I don’t know—I never listened, nor was their music ever part of our family life.  He wrote a song ‘Working Class Hero’ which he described as “a song for the revolution.” “A working class hero is something to be.” He handed,  at a dinner one night to two known radicals,  an envelope with $5,000 and the NY columnist who wrote it up,  quoted Lennon saying he “hoped some of the money would assist members of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) being sought for several bomb outrages.”   There are, of course, pages and pages regaling  the outrages inflicted on the public by these four radicals, all while counting out the shekels and dispensing their favors to the youth of our land.

Dr.Noebel summed it up:  “Drugs, promiscuous sex, and the Beatles’ consistent anti-Christian stance account for the basic reasons for the New Left’s honeymoon with the English teddy boys.”

McCartney’s marital problems have continued to titillate the press who feed them to their readers fairly often, but most of us have the feelings:  Who cares? They have done enough damage to our society.  Let them die in peace and throw the shovel in after them!

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Not to mention the resultant downgrading of American youths’ musical tastes, antagonistic to normal mental health, while  the words were designed to downgrade American society.