The Vatican’s daily newspaper marked the 40th anniversary of the White Album on Friday by dismissing as a “quip” John Lennon’s notorious claim that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ.
The legendary double album — which came out on Nov. 22, 1968 at the height of the Fab Four’s influence and popularity — was “a magical musical anthology” from a band “full of talent,” L’Osservatore Romano said.
Rather inevitably, its lengthy article kicked off with Lennon’s remark to a London newspaper in March 1966 that “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink ... We’re more popular than Jesus now.”
“It is a phrase that provoked deep indignation at the time, but which sounds today like a quip from a young man from the English working class overtaken by unexpected success,” the newspaper wrote.
The real talent of the Beatles, it said, “rested in their unequalled capacity to write popular songs with a sort of euphoric lightness.”
Pop superstar Madonna and her British husband Guy Ritchie were granted a “quickie” divorce on the grounds of his unreasonable behavior Friday, a month after announcing their eight-year marriage was over.
District Judge Caroline Reid pronounced the decree nisi at the High Court’s Family Division in London during a hearing which lasted barely a minute and was not attended by the couple or their lawyers.
The case — Ciccone ML vs Ritchie GS — was dealt with as a British newspaper reported film director Ritchie would receive no money under an agreed settlement.
Ritchie has expressed relief at the speed of the divorce and stressed that access to the couple’s children and not money was the biggest issue for him, the Daily Mirror said Friday.
“Thank God,” the paper quoted him as saying. “It was never about money — never about her bloody art collection. I just wanted to settle it and move on ... I didn’t raise any objections at any stage until she insisted the children lived permanently in New York.”
He is worth an estimated US$45 million dollars compared to Madonna’s US$446 million fortune.
The couple’s two sons, eight-year-old Rocco and David Banda, three — whom they adopted in Malawi — will split their time between Britain and the US, the Mirror and other papers said.
Madonna’s 12-year-old daughter Lourdes, from a previous relationship with fitness trainer Carlos Leon, is set to stay with her mother in the US.
The court released a document in which Madonna stated that Ritchie’s unreasonable behavior was continuing and that they had not lived together at the same address for six months.
The US government has asked the Supreme Court to reimpose a US$500,000 fine slapped on CBS television for a 2004 broadcast of live images of pop star Janet Jackson’s breast, court documents show.
It is up to the Supreme Court to decide whether it will consider the request.
Prosecutors are asking the high court justices to weigh in on a case that raised eyebrows and stirred passions in the US, where nudity on non-pay television is a no-no in advertising, while rare and limited to late-night hours in television series.
Jackson was performing live at the Superbowl when the attention-getting move took place, in a routine featuring her and fellow performer Justin Timberlake.
The popular press has dubbed the incident “Nipplegate.”
The Federal Communications Commission imposed a US$550,000 fine on CBS for breaking indecency rules.
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