Yoko Ono is suing the makers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," attempting to have the documentary removed from theaters because of its unauthorized use of John Lennon's "Imagine."
The makers of the film, which alleges that academia excludes or suppresses views contradicting Darwinism from discussion, claim the inclusion of a snippet of the song is protected under the Fair Use doctrine.
I can't find the "Expelled" clip containing "Imagine" online, but this YouTube offering illustrates its lyrics in a manner that, if memory serves, is similar to the ironic way the song is used in "Expelled," though not as powerful.
I previously wrote on "Imagine" in January 2005:
"Expelled" news item is via The Curt Jester.Maclin Horton is incensed that Rolling Stone named John Lennon's "Imagine" the third greatest song of all time when, as the magazine acknowledges, Lennon himself admitted it was the Communist Manifesto set to music:
Has the Rolling Stone writer and others like him actually read the Communist Manifesto? No one today could read a call for "racial purity" without thinking at once of the Holocaust and viewing the author as at least hovering around the moral territory of its perpetrators. Can the Rolling Stone writer read proposals such as "abolition of private property" and "centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State" without thinking of the millions dead in Stalin’s terror, in the Gulag, in Mao's Cultural Revolution? Can he or she read "Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture" followed by "gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country" without thinking of Cambodia's killing fields?On the other hand, the chairman of the Communist Party USA has no problem with the free publicity.
