Where is John Lennon now that we need him more

I confess that I always thought John Lennon was The Man, the artist par excellence, a performer/songwriter of such immense genius that being great was to him as natural as going through the motions of everyday life for the rest of us. Onstage, especially after he left the Beatles, he commanded the attention of everyone watching and listening, the cynosure of all eyes, the natural leader of whatever aggregation of musicians or artists he happened to be among. His guitar playing, his singing, even much of the writing seemed in some ways secondary to his creative genius. Most of all, it was the way his mind worked that was most captivating. He was, of course, good at all the things that went into performing music, the rock-solid rhythm, the phrasing, the shaping of melodic contour. He wasn't the best at any of those things, but he didn't need to be.

He was also very funny, deeply wise and penetratingly direct. All of those qualities came through in the movie "The United States vs. John Lennon," the recently-released documentary about Lennon's years in New York post-Beatles, when he fell in with radicals like Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Bobby Seale and others. About his political awakening, and his subsequent harassment by Hoover and Nixon, which led to a prolonged immigration fight. Through it all, Lennon kept his integrity and his puckish, self-effacing humor, which naturally rubbed some people the wrong way. The masses love false humility in their idols. I don't suppose he was the easiest human being on Earth to get along with, and no doubt he left many bruised egos in his wake. You don't become John Lennon, I guess, by just being one of the guys. Asked why he would not simply leave the U.S. and return to Britain to end the immigration fight, Lennon answered by saying that he liked New York, that he had many friends there, that he liked the artistic stimulation, and then, with his typical deadpan irony: "And I even brought my own cash."

During one meditative moment in a videotaped interview (with Dick Cavett, or maybe Geraldo), Lennon expressed his view that a fair analysis of what the governments of the United States, or Great Britain, or China, or most other countries were up to yielded the conclusion that they were pursuing "insane" goals. That their very purpose was to do insane things, and that a person such as himself, who pointed out the insanity (the Vietnam War, for example, or the repression by the Chinese government of its own populace) was nevertheless the one considered insane, who ought to be locked up for pointing out the madness. Somehow, when he said it, this perhaps commonplace observation acquired a new resonance. Thus always with the truly exceptional.

Monday I watched Senator James Inhofe, Chairman of the Senate's Committee on Public Works and the Environment (something like that) take the floor, as he does periodically, and denounce global warming as a hoax or hysterical overreaction or however it is he describes it these days. He talked about "left wing" scientists, used "California" as a pejorative term in describing Schwarzenegger's global warming initiative, and employed vague and ad hominem arguments such as the failure of the "environmental movement" to be right on all previous predictions as proof they were wrong about this one. He said that he was going to take on the "science" of global warming in his speech, but I didn't hear him do that. Over the years, as he has gone through these exercises, the science becomes more conclusive, better refined, and coheres toward an inescapable conclusion we're headed toward disaster, and sooner than we used to think. Inhofe, with his sandy hair and blandly rubicund face, stumbling along in his inarticulate manner, continues to proclaim what I guess is the official Senate take on this life-or-death issue: there's nothing to worry about, the climate changes over time but we don't have much to do with it, and the issue has been hyped by "Hollywood" and liberals and people like that because they want the attention. While this impractically practical man, whose formal education, as far as I can tell, does not include any curriculum involving hard science (he used to be the mayor of Tulsa, and attended the University of Tulsa in business or economics), appoints himself the gate keeper of the U.S. response to climate change, probably the main existential threat to human life over the next century. I'm sure there are reasons not immediately apparent why a Senator from Oklahoma would assert that fossil-fuel burning is no big deal, although Inhofe's attitude seems at this point even more backward than Exxon Mobil's.

I don't know who Inhofe's real audience is. One thing that is obvious is that he's not qualified to make the judgments he's making. He doesn't have the depth and he sounds like an idiot when he talks about atmospheric science. There are ways that public policy could be advanced on the subject. For example, Inhofe could bring in the posse of global warming deniers he always cites and have them square off against James Hansen and the many other (read: virtually all) serious scientists who hold the contrary view. Stephen Hawking, armed with his voice synthesizer, could attend. There's something I would pay a great deal of money to see: Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma making his inane arguments in the presence of Stephen Hawking. Remember the scene in "Annie Hall" when Woody pulls Marshall McLuhan out of nowhere...? Like that. A public debate in a Senate hearing room running over 5 or 6 days. As long as it takes, because if we don't figure this one out, nothing much else is going to matter. Thus, instead of an egotistical exercise in thundering, meaningless oration, by a Senator who thinks scientific opinions are simply expressions of underlying political leanings, we could actually find something out. If global warming is a hoax - great! I'd be glad to hear it. And if we'd better get started on a crash program to save ourselves - the sooner the better.

But to proceed in such a way would require a sane government pursuing sane objectives, instead of what we've got. Sad to say it, John, but in the generation you've been gone, things have only gotten worse. And I sure miss your music.