Okay, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, John Lennon is labeled as a closet Republican and avid Reagan supporter.

What next?

The Monkees didn’t write their own music? Jim Morrison was a member of The John Birch Society?

Jimi Hendrix worked the phones for Goldwater in ‘64? Malcolm X voted for Nixon in 1960?

Oswald was the lone gunman? Vince Foster really did commit suicide?

My head spins at the possibilities.

But, I digress.

Fred Seaman, who worked briefly as one Lennon’s flunkies from 1979 until his murder in 1980 claims that Lennon “was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.”

In a new documentary on the Beatles that Seaman is shopping around, he tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky that Lennon wasn’t the peace-loving militant that he had cultivated as his popular image.

He says, “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.” Well, that’s not exactly an indication that Lennon was a Republican. Hell, even Rosalyn Carter voted against Jimmy, but then again she really knew him.

Seaman goes on, “He’d met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event… Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe, to go after the young (peace) demonstrators in Berkeley, so I think that John maybe forgot about that… He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me.”

I’m not sure how shocking Lennon’s so-called Reagan conversion should be considering who he was married to, being a closet Reagan supporter pales in comparison to a Beatle marrying someone who considered thrashing about onstage in a brown paper bag as art.

Brown paper bag, indeed.

“He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naiveté,” Seaman said.

Yes, well, it’s not hard to imagine Lennon being embarrassed by some of the asinine behavior he displayed during his sleep in for peace days, but being called out as a Reagan supporter over thirty years after his murder by a short term assistant with a shady past is a little much, even for me.

I’ll believe Lennon was a Reagan supporter when Yoko petitions New York City to change the name of the Central Park area of Strawberry Fields to George W. Bush Gardens.

I’ll go along with the idea that Lennon turned from the dark side and came over to the light when Paul McCartney publicly proclaims that every album he’s done since Band on the Run has been total crap and he’s only in it for the money.

I’ll buy the idea that Lennon morphed from being a drug smoking, rich, spoiled anarchist to a conservative Republican when Yoko goes public with the inside scoop that John and Yoko’s last album was dedicated to Richard Nixon’s post Watergate image rehabilitation.

Yeah, well, none of that’s going to happen but just imagine how tasty that album cover would be and of course there’s the title, (John, Yoko and Dick Nixon’s Just Like) Starting Over.