Right now the world is full of more horrible, complex conflicts than you can imagine. Finding decisive, people-pleasing solutions to these conflicts is a near-impossible task, but dear old Yoko Ono seems to have dreamt up her very own crackpot scheme.
You see, if there's any one singular figure who can instantly stop the world from tearing itself apart, it's John Lennon. And Yoko Ono knows this more than anyone – so she's decided to take a full-page advert out in the New York Times to try and coerce the world into initiating an annual John Lennon day; in which all the world's armies, militias and terrorists will lay down their weapons for 24 hours, sing a few verses of Woman Is The Nigger Of The World and take a lot of heroin, safe in the knowledge that they're making a tiny 73-year-old Japanese woman very happy.
It's difficult to think of a dead singer more iconic than John Lennon. Well, apart from Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix – but do they have a special museum where people can go and look at replica models of their teeth? No they don't, so John Lennon wins.
In fact, John Lennon has managed to stay in the news an awful lot for a dead Scouser. If people aren't auctioning off John Lennon's Abbey Road suit then they're trying to contact him from the dead or ban his songs from school plays. And much of the world's continued interest in John Lennon is thanks to Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon who has kept Lennon's spirit alive by fighting with Paul McCartney a lot and suing record companies for millions of dollars.
But that's not enough for Yoko Ono. Yoko Ono wants every December 8 – the anniversary of John Lennon's death – to become a globally-recognised John Lennon Day, and she's so serious about it that she took a full-page advert out in yesterday's New York Times to explain it:
“Every year, let’s make December 8th the day to ask for forgiveness from those who suffered the insufferable. Let's wish strongly that one day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves, and by healing ourselves, we healed the world…. [to victims] Know that the physical and mental abuse you have endured will have a lingering effect on our society. Know that the burden is ours.”
While we can't really fault Yoko Ono's intentions here, it's hard to see how the wishy-washy memory of a long-dead man who once bought an entire apartment just to keep his collection of fur coats in will be able to convince people to ask torture-victims for forgiveness, let alone literally heal the world.
And let's be realistic here – if Yoko Ono succeeds and gets an annual John Lennon Day installed, then Paul McCartney is only going to get bitter and demand that someone creates a Paul McCartney day, too. Actually, now we come to think of it a Paul McCartney Day might be a lot of fun, since it'd mainly involve getting ridiculously drunk and stabbing amputees with a wine glass until sunset.
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