Where have all the commies gone, long time passing?
So Pete Seeger has finally become a New Soviet Man, if we take the Wikipedia definition of "a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union".
I find it interesting that his dad was a Harvard-trained musicologist who founded the music department at UC Berkeley before getting ash-canned for pacifism in 1918, then later held administrative posts in various New Deal agencies, including the Stalinist-sounding "Farm Resettlement Administration". This makes Pete practically the official little drummer boy of the Gramscian Long March.
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26 comments:
He didn't apologize for his support of Stalin until 2007.
The competing red/blue coverage of his death will be interesting to read, I'm thinking.
You know the difference between a harmonica player and a banjo player?
A harmonica player only sucks on every other note.
Rot in hell, communist bastard!
I'm afraid my reaction was "Oh, was he still alive?"
Bob: At least he actually did. So many on the left never do.
"I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain
It wasn't that he was a communist. George Orwell was as pink as my daughter's stuffed bunny and I respect Orwell.
It's that his songs were awful. Pure childish twaddle from capo to coda.
He's in the hands of a higher judge, and I only have one thing to ask: if God in His wisdom and mercy decides to let Pete Seeger into Heaven, I hope He assigns him somewhere OTHER than the band. It'd be hell to be in Heaven having to listen to Seeger for the rest of eternity.
gvi
Yeah, when you're fifty years behind Khrushchev in your denunciation of Stalin, I believe the modern Progressive-speak term for that is "problematic".
@Tam,
Yes, I don't think they'll ever forgive Khrushchev for jumping the gun like that.
Whatever kinda commie he was before, we can say definitively that he is now a good commie.
It breaks the heart, truly it does.
Tirno said...
Whatever kinda commie he was before, we can say definitively that he is now a good commie.
Yep. Just not nearly enough of the good ones.
Not much of an apology, and yet the old limousine Bolshevik could put a song over:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcbqCssiBUc
I dunno. I always kinda admired the way he stuck to his guns. Even though, yeah, if he's so smart how come he's still a dumbass commie?
But my first reaction was "Pete Seeger was alive?"
Wonder if he's going to rate a mention in tonight's SOTU?
Whoever watches it, get back "yay or nay" to the rest of us, please.
rickn8or,
"Whoever watches it, get back "yay or nay" to the rest of us, please."
I certainly can't be arsed to. They hired the guy over my strenuous objections in the first place.
His mother was Ruth Crawford-Seeger, who was (and is) a highly respected modern composer. Given that pedigree, I still wonder why he couldn't do something more interesting than he did.
Ideal text of Obambi's State of the Coup.
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, members of Congress, the administration, my fellow Americans.
"God bless America. Good night. We now return you to NCIS, which is already in progress."
There. I fixed it for him.
M
Ding-dong the Totalitaian Troubador and Thief is dead! The Rat Bastard stole poor African-man Solomon Linda's song "Mbube" (Zulu: lion) and re-named it for the illiterate masses "Wimoweh," and kept the proceeds.
Didn't realize he was still around either... and good riddance now... He was NOT a paragon of America...
NotClauswitz,
I'm no fan of Seeger's, but some casual digging finds that blaming Seeger for what happened with that song is ridiculous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimoweh#Copyright_issues
There's quite a bit to read there, but here's the paragraph about Seeger's involvement:
Pete Seeger expressed concerns about the copyright laws associated with the song. Folkways Records founder Moe Asch frequently voiced the belief that traditional songs could not and should not be copyrighted at all.[13] Although Linda's name was listed as a performer on the record, The Weavers assumed that the song was traditional. The Weavers' managers and publisher and their attorneys, however, knew otherwise, because they were contacted by and reached an agreement with Eric Gallo of South Africa. They attempted to maintain, however, that South African copyrights were not valid because South Africa was not a signatory to U.S. copyright law and were hence "fair game."[1] As early as the 1950s, when Linda's authorship was made clear, Seeger sent him a donation of one thousand dollars and instructed TRO/Folkways to henceforth donate his (Seeger's) share of authors' earnings. The folksinger, however, who was not a businessman, trusted his publisher's word of honor and neglected or was unable to see to it that these instructions were carried out.[1] In fact, TRO/Folkways crafted an agreement with Gallo Records giving Gallo distribution rights to the song in South Africa and Rhodesia while TRO reserved the rights to royalties earned elsewhere.
I dunno. Focusing on his communist party membership, which he gave up 65 years ago, feels like an unfair cherry-picked review of Seeger, who'll be remembered instead, I'm sure, for his seminal contributions to the folk music genre. Not one I much care for, but a pretty impressive lifetime achievement.
In the link you provided I learned he also dropped out of Harvard, rode his bicycle across the country, enlisted in the army during WWII, and gave congress the finger by refusing to testify against himself and was then arrested for it. Attributed to somebody else those things could easily be cast as honorable.
Carry on.
Bob: His 'apology' was at best equivocal - something minimizing Stalins crimes, IIRC.
Great job with the "New Soviet Man" snark. I admit I missed it when I read it this morning.
Hot tea hurts like hell when ejected at high velocity through one's nose. Thought that may be useful anecdotal info for ypur readers....:-)
Tam said: "I certainly can't be arsed to. They hired the guy over my strenuous objections in the first place."
I second the motion. The communist pedigrees of the current C-in-C and his top echelon of orcs are breathtaking to behold. The most cursory background check would have disqualified him for the office. Apparently, that kind of thing isn't done anymore. Either that, or the people doing it these days find backgrounds such as his to be a feature, not a bug. I would never have been able to get any of my (ex)clearances with a background like his.
BSR
A: Whether he gave up his Commie Card or not, he was a small-c communist to the end.
B: He never could sing on key. Listening to him for me was like fingernails on a blackboard.
The slimy bastige didn't even have the grace and decency to kick the bucket fifty or sixty years ago.
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