Rant #926: Yoko Says It All

Let me say right at the outset that I am not a fan of Yoko Ono.

I never understood her "art," whether it was her music or her films.

She seemed to be more eccentric than artistic.

John Lennon fell in love with her, and the rest is history.

Although her husband has not been with us for more than 30 years, Ono has never fallen out of the public spotlight, and in the current digital age, she continues to pop up time and again, to get whatever message she wants to get across heard by the masses.

And she often uses social media to do it.

Her latest occurrence is that she tweeted a photo of her late husband's bloodied glasses on the occasion of what would have been their 44th wedding anniversary, in an attempt to draw attention to gun violence.

"The death of a loved one is a hallowing experience," Ono tweeted on Wednesday morning. "After 33 years, our son Sean and I still miss him."

Maybe she meant "harrowing" rather than "hallowing," and where is stepson Julian in all this, but I think she got her point across with that image.

Above the glasses, it reads, "Over 1,057,000 people have been killed by guns in the U.S.A. since John Lennon was shot and killed on December 8, 1980."

Ono has used her husband's glasses as a symbol before this.

Right after his death, she used the glasses on her LP "Season of Glass" and single "Walking on Thin Ice."

Some people might find this type of commercialization of her husband's murder a little too much to take, but I think her heart is in the right place this time.

She lost her husband when someone used a gun to kill him. How many other husbands have been lost the same way? How many wives? How many nieces, nephews, cousins, children?

Things haven't changed that much in the more than 30 years that Lennon left us.

We have the Newtown, Conn. massacre as sort of a "gut check" if we think things have changed.

They haven't.

I personally do not understand why people need to have guns, legal or otherwise.

I know that in this country we have a right to bear arms, and most people do bear arms legally, but somehow, gun violence seems to be escalating, not receding.

And now in some school districts, teachers can carry guns.

I don't get it, and probably never will.

Maybe somebody can explain it to me, but I do think this time, Ono made her point, and she made it well.

Put the guns away.

I know that the following is almost a rosy thing to say, but remember, her husband said this long ago, and that, too, hasn't changed:

"All You Need Is Love."

Think about it.