Today is Yoko Ono's 90th birthday. Since the late 1960s, John Lennon's widow has served as a lightning rod for the ire of an overly large coterie of Beatles fans who would come to blame her for the group's disbandment. In many ways, this rabid disgust can be attributed to unchecked misogyny, even racism, whose animus can be traced to an abiding disbelief by certain fans that Lennon could actually love someone like Ono, preferring to believe, it seemed, that she had somehow beguiled him.
In September 1980, during the final weeks of his life, Lennon confronted this issue, admitting his frustration to journalist David Sheff. "Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist, or even as part of the Beatles," he remarked, "has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything." Incredibly, not even Ono's unfathomable trauma at having witnessed her husband's senseless murder would quell the naysayers and detractors who disparage her name.
