Revisionism

Yglesias' musing on the way we view the administrations of Kennedy and LBJ happening to come the day before the 30th anniversary John Lennon's murder seems very timely to me:

The sky-high ratings for JFK, while not at all surprising, are a reminder of a kind of fascinating anomaly in how we think of American history. If you look at the Kennedy/Johnson administration as a single unit you have the following:

    1. A hugely successful progressive agenda that utterly and enduringly changed American society for the better. That’s the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, it’s Medicare, it’s Medicaid, and it’s also the oft-overlooked Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

    2. A disastrous war in Vietnam that killed far, far, far more people than the misadventure in Iraq plus some serious violations of civil liberties.

    3. A ton of smaller-bore lefty stuff that wasn’t popular and got rolled back.

It’s a bit hard to know what one should say about this JFK/LBJ record and there’s no particular reason to think that Kennedy and Johnson had any substantial disagreements about it. But since Kennedy was murdered, it’s possible to kind of fudge the history and create a mythic Kennedy figure who’s associated with all the parts of Sixties Liberalism that people like, cleansed of all the other stuff.

To me, this is how the Lennon/McCartney history has been distilled through the years, as I've written about several times, including HERE. There will always be a perfectly good argument among Beatles fans re: who was better, and common sense would tell you it would break down to 50-50 most of the time. But as history has marched on, people have come to see "The Beatles" as "John Lennon," mostly thanks to the fact that he had the good sense to get killed first.

Mostly, I've always been pissed at how because he got shot, he became a martyr, while Paul became the "pussy Beatle", a "lightweight fop." In a lot of people's eyes. John IS the Beatles, which is totally ridiculous. Paul could have a tendency to get a bit mawkish at times (one song about your sheepdog is one too many, Paul), but he also CRANKED plenty - witness his bone-shivering cover of "Long Tall Sally", or his heavy metal "Helter Skelter." On the very same day he recorded "Yesterday", Paul also ran through his Little Richardesque number "I'm Down", so don't tell me he's a pussy (twas his 23rd birthday, and he ALSO recorded "I've Just Seen a Face" - quite a fucking day. jesus.) John and Paul were both great because of each other. Yes, John probably helped Paul steer from his sentimental show tune side sometimes, but Paul also kept John from completely going off the deep end too eary with his "artsy primal scream feeling songs" - or, as I call them, "crap." So everyone, drop the Lennon is the Jesus Beatle and Paul sucked nonsense.