John Lennon Was a Reagan-Loving Conservative, Former Assistant Says

IF i remember correctly, Fred Seamon stole lots of Lennons personal stuff after he died. Don't believe a word the creep says..... J EDGAR HOOVER is turing over in his grave at this story, he spend lots of taxpayer money trying to get John deported... Fred Seamon turncoat, thief'........

Some folks are such NARROW MINDED SIMPLETONS that they can't understand people like myself and Lennon. WE THINK FOR OURSELVES. TRULY intelligent people are constantly learning, questioning, growing and changing their opinions based on new information. ** I reserve the right to change my mind. By reading news papers & watching many newscasts everyday ,gathering facts, and thinking WHAT do I think not what the journalist wants me to think. Only SHEEP fit into LEFT or RIGHT. Almost nothing is black and white. Unfortunately few people watch the news; even less READ the papers. They form opinions based on emotion and tiny amounts of dubious information---- Nor, could they articulate an argument for or against an issue. They are lazy and it's easier to adopt "the party line" on any issue. Both Lennon and myself are too smart, too independent and rebellious & too confident in our own minds to be put in a box as all Liberal or all Conservative. -- When he said " but if you go carryn' pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain't gonna make it anyone anyhow"--he's Anti- Communist.

I can't blame him-- Reagan was popular at the time. A lot of people liked him.
I can easily picture Lennon as a modern-day libertarian.

You can see a picture of Seth Swirsky and Ringo Starr on Seth's web site.
Just do a search. Happy Viewing!!

Sorry jbullfla... Your flowery attempt at intelligent prose doesn't impress me.
Show me the evidence that Seaman was paid even one dollar for his words.
Show me where any of the contributors were paid anything. I'll be waiting.
And for you being a former conservative, it just doesn't work that way. Sane people mature from liberalism into conservatism, not the other way around.
Swirsky didn't make any of the headlines. Certainly you realize that headers like "Lennon was a Closet Conservative" and "He loved Ron Yeah Yeah Yeah" are made by editors for people to start reading the story. I don't believe Lennon was a full fledged conservative when he died, but I do believe Seaman's story is mostly true. Why would he make up the part about his communist uncle getting into arguments with Lennon? I also don't recall Lennon making any anti-Reagan quotes when R.R. was running for president. If you find any, let me know. He did say "It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself." Sounds like a speech about self-reliance to me, a generally conservative concept.
Lennon was a successful man and certainly didn't appreciate his taxes going up during the Carter years. Lennon met Reagan in 1974 at a football game, and according to Frank Gifford, Reagan had his arm around Lennon and was explaining the rules of American football to him. Gifford has talked about this meeting many times. So they did get along quite well during their one and only meeting.
Lennon himself called the early 1970's his "radical period" and he had certainly moderated greatly from the "Imagine" days. He described "Double Fantasy" as "not political".
Seaman was his last personal assistant, and was probably around him quite a bit. So he tried to sell some personal memorabilia. Just to have access to that kind of stuff shows he was close to Lennon. Don't close your mind to the fact that Lennon was a free-thinking man who could make up his own mind about things.
And stating that he would vote for Reagan over Carter in 1980 doesn't make him a full-fledged conservative. The headline writers made that leap. Just use your common sense and abandon knee-jerk liberal assumptions about the world, and I'll guarantee you that life will brighten considerably!

Nice, admiralcrook... Swirsky writes for the Huffington Post, that must make him a liberal. That's why he writes for the National Review, RealClearPolitics, and surely his leftist credentials are what earned him a White House invite from Karl Rove in 2006. Indeed, Swirsky is a HuffPo columnist, alongside Christopher Hitchens, Peggy Noonan, George Will, and several other conservatives. Meanwhile, neocons paying "impartial sources" to parrot their talking points is nothing new: remember the Armstrong Williams scandal? The dozens of supposedly "independent" bloggers on the Bush Admin payroll? It's not beyond the realm of possibility to suggest that Seaman was paid for his time and coached on his talking points. Or maybe he just holds a grudge against the man who paid him to feed his cat for a few months in 1979. Yeah, Seaman sure is a reliable source. He knew Lennon like a brother, I'm certain.

The cherry atop your fail sundae is the personal attack. Typical Rethuglican; you argue with weak rhetoric, then belittle your opponent. I know the style all too well; I'm a former conservative myself. And if you really want to get in a pissing match over personal success, feel free to whip it out; I'm pretty confident I'll have you beat.

This was a smear job by a man peddling an agenda, plain and simple. He sought to make headlines with a tawdry and outlandish accusation, and as AOL has shown, he succeeded. Tools like you will swallow any swill these charlatans feed you; it's how Fox News stays on the air, it's how Rethugs continue to get elected, and it's how this nation continues down the path to ruin. Proud of yourself?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do than argue with nimrods online. Your inevitable frothing reply will be ignored.

For billy sunday: He wrote "Imagine" around 1971. The story is about Lennon becoming more conservative in the last years of his life. Are you really that stupid, or are you making a special effort today??

Also, this comment is for "jbullfla".
When you write something please include everything. Don't be selective when trying to present your case. You lose a lot of credibility that way. You said Swirsky wrote for the National Review, but you didn't mention the fact that he also wrote for the Huffington Post. Also you implied that Swirsky paid these people for their statements. I don't believe that is true. He put out the word that he was going to make this film, and people responded because they wanted to.
I know that this is painful for you but listen to a little advice: Make your own success, don't be jealous of other people's success, be truly progressive and advance past the thinking stage of a sixteen year-old, and last but not least...
Go out and try and make something of yourself. Don't rely on others to do it for you.

Funny to see these liberals go into a full fledged panic. The story is probably mostly true. Although the headlines I've seen stating "Lennon was a Closet conservative", etc... are just headlines to grab attention and get you to read. I've read interviews where Lennon was chastising liberals for trying to get him to represent them on certain issues. He called them "left-wingers", and resented them speaking for him on assumptions. Also, this guy was his persona assistant with access to a lot of personal stuff. For example he was punished for trying to sell personal articles of the musician. But I don't think he made all of this up. For what? A guy was doing a documentary and asked a lot of different people for their input.

This is rank horeshit of the highest order. Either it is a neo-con put-up job or some feckless nobody looking for attention. Shame on you either way. The man who wrote IMAGINE was no bleeping conservative.