A Good Day To Clear Something Up

I like words. I guess being an internationally famous blogger would be a challenge if I didn't. There are certain words that are constantly misused and it does nothing short of drive me up a fucking wall.

For example, today is December 8th. The thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder in New York City. For anyone my age, it's hard to believe that it's been nearly a decade since Ringo officially became the coolest living Beatle.

But what I'd like to point out is that Lennon was murdered. He decidedly wasn't "assassinated".

Back when words actually meant something, assassination was considered an inherently political act. It was meant to effect public policy in some way. While John Lennon was a very important musician - certainly one of the most important in modern popular music - he was not a political figure, his desire to give peace a chance notwithstanding.

Mark Chapman was a deranged loser with a Salinger fetish, but his crime of thirty years ago wouldn't meet the traditional definition of an assassination. It might have spared us from the biggest of disappointing reunion tours, but it didn't change history the way that, say, the Kennedy assassination's elevation of Lyndon Johnson to the presidency did. It wasn't the predicate to throw Europe into a huge, pointless war in the way that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand did.

A guy who played guitar and wrote some memorable songs was brutally murdered in front of his wife. He was not assassinated.

And you know what? It used to be that being brutally murdered in the street was bad enough.