Some Beatles-related hate mail from a clearly good and stable person who has no problem casually tossing around the word "genocide"
- Dec 3, 2025
- 5 min read
Wednesday 12/3/25
A letter I sent to a few people today before getting going with work. Thought I'd put it here, as it's useful in speaking to larger issues. The person in question didn't leave their name, because people like this rarely do. They're cowards. But we must remember about them that they hate themselves more than they hate anything else, which is formidable loathing. It's fine if one doesn't wish to pity them, but we should be aware of where they're coming from and why they act as they do, especially as this kind of person and their twisted, toxic thinking--and their inevitable projection--becomes more and more the norm in our world. The real issue isn't this one plainly horrible, sputteringly vituperative person--like he's choking on his own poison--but what I remark below about books, quality writing, reading comprehension, the parasocial, and what would happen with a work of quality rather than a work of dross gets to the salient, far more substantial problems. One should read the piece itself, too. But here's the letter:
Something for you--really two things.
Here's a link to a new piece on the Beatles' Anthology 4.
You'll see that it's very clear and straightforward. It discusses the issues that undermine the release, the tracks on it that do provide value, and a larger problem with Beatles-based discussions as such at present, in what is essentially a subculture of so-called hot takes and people failing to say anything more substantial than "Abbey Road slaps" and "Revolver is a banger."
Below that you will see three comments from readers. I didn't even know there were comments. I do two things in my life at this point: I write/work, and I run stairs. I don't waste time or energy going sideways.
But this was brought to my attention by the editor, in case I wanted to respond. I didn't. Nothing to be gained, unless I know your first and last name, and I'd save that for the blog anyway.
The editor--good guy--was pointing out the remarks from the last charming fellow, with his talk of genocide. What's perhaps more depressing to me, though, is the first person, who thinks that "Beatles corpus" refers to himself and his contemporaries, rather than the Beatles' original body of work.
This is a person who tosses out a word like "diagnostic," which means he went to college (it's sad that such a thing is a giveaway, but so it goes). He's probably over sixty, likely over seventy, and that wasn't something he could comprehend.
Do you remember the letter I wrote in response to the one I received from my niece Lilah for her school project?
Lilah is in the fourth grade. She is considered very bright. She reads a lot. I think you could say it's her favorite thing to do. Lilah didn't understand that letter. Her older brother Charlie is in the sixth grade. He didn't understand it either. Now, you couldn't write something more clear, including for kids. There isn't a word any of them don't know.
And you look at it and think, "Okay, what is something here that someone could fail to get?" There's nothing you can point to. My point is that most people can't understand anything they read, pretty much. Doesn't matter who they are or how simple the writing is, how clear the writing is, if the writing is perfect.
Look how angry that third person as a result of this perfectly balanced, perfectly reasonable, sublimely written Beatles piece. Clearly the person who wrote it isn't some bad person. Clearly it isn't verbose, self-indulgent, cruel, mocking. Very limpid and very A to B.
And yet it causes this other man--whose profile photo, ironically, is a photo of an album cover by the band Love--to bring up genocide, without, alas, knowing what the word genocide actually means.
Why? Because he feels inferior. He has been made to feel dumb because he has measured himself against someone and something else, neither of which are at his low level. Now, if this was some hacked off empty piece of piffle, barely above the level of "The Beatles are the GOATs!", then he'd be happy. Because it would be nothing. People who are nothing need other things to be nothing, which allows them to feel better about themselves, less under attack--though no attack has been mounted at all--with this thing they won't remember anything about, given that there's nothing to it.
But what is the value in a piece like that? A book like that? No actual value. You have to understand: Value now, in these matters, and in so many others, is in allowing someone who is very insecure, typically very angry, typically hurting, typically unstable, and easily threatened, to feel okay about themselves.
How do you do that? With mediocrity. With piffle. With something that says nothing. Basically, a piece, a book, as Wikipedia entry. If it's nonfiction, they want quotes from Ringo, even if none of those quotes rise above the level of him saying, "I thought it was great." The quotes--the actual quotation marks--are like a hug.
Here's the other thing: This is what you'd see if and when these Beatles books of mine ever come out. You'd pretty much get this. People want books about nonfiction subjects to be empty, Wikipedia-adjacent, cheerleading events, without ideas or depth, but in this case, gushy, mindless praise for "the boys," because such people have these creepy, deranged parasocial connections with them.
I clearly have no agenda, no angle I work. It's a service, really. I hear and understand this art better than others. That's the truth. It's in the the work over many years. There is nothing about the Beatles by anyone else that is at all like what I write about the Beatles. With the depth and insight. From a musical perspective, a historical perspective, cultural, social, global, individual.
But I bet you if you checked this guy's comment history, he doesn't lash out if the piece is vanilla and says little to nothing. I don't see the point. And, of course, I don't see the point in being someone like this, living like that, which is different, in my view, than living at all. It is a norm now, though. Look, then, at the state of discourse, be it with the Beatles or anything else. And, too, the state of the world.
By the by: I could totally see that being Matt Hanson, aka, Junior Colin.
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