Imagine no John Lennon. It's easy if you try. No more insipid platitudes. From that annoying guy. You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join me. In a world that knows right from wrong.

        Imagine this: Right after the Sept. 11 — the day the world shrank — Clear Channel sent out a list of insensitive songs that were banned from its 1,200 radio stations, including eight in Cincinnati.

        No kidding.

        These sensitivity police are the same people who hired “Bubba the Love Sponge” to dump toxic waste in Cincin
nati. They are the corporate executives who promote shock jocks whose tongues should be scrubbed by a Haz-Mat team in orange plastic suits. They are the promoters who decorate billboards with stuff you can't explain to your kids without blushing like a stoplight.

        Could it be that these people had a morality seizure?

        It's like finding rules for towel-snapping etiquette posted in the junior high boys' locker room. Bad taste, perhaps, but if it wasn't for bad taste, they'd have no taste at all.

        Clear Channel denied “banning” anything, and seemed offended to be accused of attempted decency.

        There were mandatory protests about “censorship.” The “ban” list included John Lennon's peace song “Imagine.” Sacrilege! On stations that play oxymoronic “classic rock” it's almost a religious hymn.

        I was blissfully ignoring it all. Just another woolly caterpillar in the Farmer's Almanac of signs that the coming winter is going to be unseasonably weird. Congress sharing bipartisan gas masks. Harvard bringing back the ROTC. And WEBN having “sensitivity” cramps.

        But then those lyrics kept repeating in my head and I realized: They accidentally got it right.

        I loved the Beatles so much I was the first kid in fifth grade to get a Beatle haircut. I listened to Sgt. Pepper until my brain rotated at 33 1/3 rpms. John Lennon was my hero.

        But if any song is yanked after Sept. 11, I'd nominate “Imagine.”

        It's the antiquated anthem of moral relativity. The theme song for existential futility. Background Muzak for a generation that thinks nothing is evil except people who believe evil exists. A dirge of stumbling pacifist defeat.

        Listen to it closely. It's not a song about peace. It's a song about emptiness. A world in which there is nothing worth fighting for. No heaven. No hell. No hope. No faith. No good. No bad. Nothing. Only empty sky.

        And these days, that rock won't roll.

        Right and wrong have never been more obvious. There are so many things to fight for, we don't know where to start the list. Is A for airlines or anthrax?

        From where I stand, there's a new moral clarity as crisp and vivid as an October morning after a frost.

        Like the day I met my friend Karl for lunch. He was leaving Monday to serve his country, called up from the Army Reserves for a year of active duty.

        We talked about his plans to spend the afternoon with his son. We told him how much we admired him for driving into the storm clouds while the rest of us run for cover. We talked about how fast a year speeds by in our bland, ordinary lives.

        But I could tell he was already missing his wife and kids. Each hour was suddenly measured in moments to be treasured later, miles away from home, dragged unexpectedly into the cyclone.

        While we fret about what's on the radio, thousands of Karls among us have been plucked away, summoned on short notice to defend America and protect us all. They're riding to meet evil on the outskirts of civilization, with no guarantee that they will come home.

        Imagine that.

        E-mail: pbronson@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/bronson

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