■ The U.S. Government, generally referred to nowadays as the government, wants to deport John Lennon. But Yoko Ono, Mrs. Lennon, is pregnant, so the Feds have stopped proceedings until the baby arrives. Lennon is hugely relieved, comparing the threat of expulsion to an impending “guillotine.” That implies quite a compliment to this fair land, and we wish him well, though we can’t forbear adding that he wouldn’t be in this mess if he smoked Winstons. As for his admirers, we hope they will draw the appropriate lesson: of all the forms of American repression that John Lennon writes about, the cruelest is deportation.
■ We now have ourselves an activist Vice President, which is to say, one who defends the President against members of the Cabinet. His own view, Nelson Rockefeller told the Christian Science Monitor, is “that when the President makes a decision, you either support it, or if you don’t agree with it and feel strongly, you resign. . . . But to go out and poor-mouth what your boss has decided is not serving him well nor is it serving yourself well . . .”—an obvious reference to William Simon and Alan Greenspan, who vociferously oppose the President’s $100-billion government energy plan. This Administration is so open that its officials are free to attack their boss, and each other for attacking him, without restraint or rebuke. Meanwhile, Jack Ford proclaimed that he had smoked marijuana, and Mr. Ford, notwithstanding his stated opposition to repealing federal criminal law against that act, said merely, “I can disagree with what some of our children do, but as long as they are honest and give us an opportunity to express our views, I don’t think I should go any farther.” A true republican: primus inter pares within family and regime alike.
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