On Strips: Capp vs Lennon

By | Friday, July 18, 2014 Leave a Comment
In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed a pair of "bed-ins" (one in Amesterdam, one in Montreal) to protest the Vietnam War. It was kind of like a sit-in, but they stayed in bed. It was a form of non-violent protest to try to encourage... well, non-violence, I suppose. They garnered a fair amount of publicity, but not much else from what I understand. Part of the publicity in their Montreal stay came from their inviting a variety of celebrities to come meet with them and talk about issues surrounding the war. One such guest, who was by pretty much all accounts the most adversarial, was cartoonist Al Capp.

Capp spent ten minutes with them, clearly disagreeing on many points, and he put forth more than a little effort into goading Lennon and/or Ono into violence by repeatedly and deliberately insulting and aggitating them. Capp had been growing increasingly out of step with the popular culture, and his personal indescretions were less frequently ignored. This didn't help, though Li'l Abner continued to appear in newspapers under his hand until 1977.

Here's the complete footage of Capp meeting Lennon and Ono for the first (and, I believe, only) time...
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