The diary below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal and adapted for Political Cortex.

Allow me to digress from the usual politics and current events topics of my blog writing to acknowledge the anniversary of John Lennon's death. I was only eleven in 1980 and watching Monday Night Football when Howard Cosell delivered the news. I had recently learned all the lyrics to the Beatles, Rubber Soul album and was especially moved by the lyrics to "In My Life."

Personally I've never been a great believer in icons. Lennon himself delivers a stirring rebuke to the myth of icons with his classic composition God early in his solo career. Yet Lennon to me was different. Lennon was an artistic genius and international statesman.