Thursday, June 1, 2017

It's No Contest!

CNN wins the title for the stupidest article connected to the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The cover, of course, featured the actual 1967 Beatles amid cutouts of a number of famous and obscure people, including wax figures of the 1964 version of the world's best-known Liverpudlians. It's become iconic, and served as the basis for the cover Frank Zappa wanted for his We're Only in It for the Money album. But a nervous record company, smelling potential lawsuits, put the Pepper-parody cover on the inside gatefold when the Beatles' record company objected.

CNN, in the person of Brandon Griggs, assessed the cover as too full of obscurities (which was intentional from the get-go) as well as too white and too male. The majority of the folks on the cover were chosen by the Beatles themselves. But rather than take them to task, Griggs puts cover co-creator Jann Haworth, 75, on the target for helping cause the problem. She pleads guilty in the article of having 1967 ways of thinking in 1967 instead of being woke enough to recognize the needs for minorities and women the way the much smarter Griggs can do from his perch in 2017.

Philistine.

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