“I hereby extend an invitation to join the John Lennon Society to anyone suffering from ignorance, maladjustment problems, or behavioral dysfunction. But beware, the requirements are as elitist as they are bizarre. So unless you suffer from severe philosophical confusion (‘subjectivity is truth!’), role-playing displacement, or knee-jerk reactions to Real World concerns, please don’t apply. After all, we have to draw the line somewhere. Will you be accepted? Take this short test to judge your self-worth.

1.) Do you, or do you not, support the God-given right of alcoholic, vagrant bums to disrupt the business of Lincoln Highway merchants, capitalistic pigs that they are? How can you even consider the rights of these tax-paying scum over those of inebriated bums with nothing more socially productive to do than exercise their constitutional right to pass out, urinate and puke on their doorways? What kind of American are you, anyway? This is the land of the free…isn’t it?!

2.) Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a card- carrying group less concerned with self-importance, social ignorance, and self-deluding fantasies of grandiosity, than with the (God-forbid) notion that you might in fact be completely confused about the real cause of your misdirected impulses? You have! Hey–quick (before you flunk out of school), join the Club.

3.) Do you believe in free speech?! Don’t you think anyone, however confused, has a God given constitutional right (look, it says so right here!) to Annoy Others With Half-Baked Ideas?! And have them seriously considered?

4.) Do you, or do you not, believe that a pop-song writer, apparently no less human than anyone else, was divinely gifted with a novel social perspective lost on those like J.F.K., Martin Luther King, or Mr. Ghandi? I mean, c’mon, do you think we named ourselves the ‘John Lennon Society’ because we were too young or ignorant of the truly wise social prophets who preceded our glorious leader? Hell, those guys never had heroin habits, did they? Like that really has anything at all to do with it…I mean, be serious.

Listen, we’re really short of people. There’s not many out there like us. But we pride ourselves on having tried to master the public relations strategy of making a big stink. That really makes us unique in the annals of political movements. After all, we’re not here merely to hear ourselves make noise. Hey, ‘He’s not stoned, he’s not screwed up, he’s my brother.’ The revolution lives…come join us! Everyone else is just blind or out to lunch, aren’t they?…”

Michael T. Adams

Graduate Student

Political Science