{"id":8162,"date":"2014-02-01T17:59:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T17:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/02\/01\/saturday-night-at-the-oldies-pete-seeger-1919-2014\/"},"modified":"2014-02-01T17:59:56","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T17:59:56","slug":"saturday-night-at-the-oldies-pete-seeger-1919-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/02\/01\/saturday-night-at-the-oldies-pete-seeger-1919-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Night at the Oldies: Pete Seeger (1919-2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">According to <a href=\"http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/ronradosh\/2014\/01\/30\/the-two-worst-tribute-articles-to-pete-seeger\/?singlepage=true\" target=\"_self\">Ron Radosh<\/a>, &quot;. . . &#39;The Hammer Song,&#39; known by most as \u201cIf I Had a Hammer,\u201d <strong><em>was written by Lee Hays (not Seeger) as a song to be used in defense of the indicted Communists<\/em><\/strong>, and not as a clarion call for brotherhood.&quot;&#0160; May of us were fooled way back when, we who heard it first in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VaWl2lA7968\" target=\"_self\">Peter, Paul, and Mary version<\/a>. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Rl-yszPdRTk\" target=\"_self\">Seeger version<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Buffy Sainte Marie and Pete Seeger, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Y8_9mohCUeE\" target=\"_self\">Cindy<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Pete Seeger and Donovan, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LoG3FUZGcyA\" target=\"_self\">Colours<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6bSQKOGD8AU\" target=\"_self\">Rock Island Line<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Pete Seeger and Doc Watson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=95nYQHAR-Qo\" target=\"_self\">You&#39;ve Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NHbTWJ9tjnw\" target=\"_self\">Worried Man Blues<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Back to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/print\/articles\/red-warbler_775995.html?nopager=1\" target=\"_self\">Radosh<\/a> for context, and to stem the deluge of uncritical praise (bolding added):<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Pete Seeger\u2019s death at the age of 94 has brought forth scores of celebratory tributes. America had long ago showered him with honors, which all but made up for the scorn with which he was once held in the age of the blacklist. Seeger received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1994, as well as multiple Grammys. He was named one of America\u2019s \u201cliving legends\u201d by the Library of Congress, was asked to sing at the 2009 inauguration of President Obama, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He had become, as a <em>Washington Post<\/em> story once put it, \u201cAmerica\u2019s Best Loved Commie.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Without Seeger\u2019s influence and sponsorship of folk music, from traditional Appalachian ballads to slave songs of the Old South, many would never have appreciated folk music, nor would it have become a genre whose influence has spread far and wide. He experimented with \u201cworld music\u201d long before anyone had used that term; when abroad, he collected songs and brought them back to the United States. \u201cWimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight),\u201d written by Solomon Linda and used in <em>The Lion King<\/em>, is a major example of a South African song Seeger brought here generations before Paul Simon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">What other artist would receive a statement from the president of the United States honoring him, not to speak of the scores of senators and members of Congress who found inspiration in his voice and his singing?&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Yet, an honest appreciation of Pete Seeger cannot be left at what most accolades have done. Indeed, since his political vision, his service over the decades to the brutality of Soviet-era Stalinism and to all of the post-Cold War leftist tyrannies, was inseparable from the music he made, it simply cannot be overlooked. For, more often than not, Seeger\u2019s voice was heard in defense of causes in which only fools could still believe. As Paul Berman put it, \u201cLet us sing \u2018If I Had a Hammer,\u2019 then, and, at every third verse, let our hammers bop Pete Seeger on the head for having been a fool and an idiot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">And calling him a fool and an idiot is, indeed, not too harsh a judgment to make about Pete Seeger. I say that sadly, as a person for whom Pete was a childhood hero. I studied banjo with him, got to know him, and visited him at the legendary home he built from scrap in Beacon, New York.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">For years, all that Pete Seeger said about Joseph Stalin, whose regime he served without a blink for decades, was that the Soviet leader was a \u201chard driver.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">During the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939-41), Seeger sang antiwar songs that, in effect, called for the support of Hitler. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, he withdrew the songs he had just recorded and suddenly supported the \u201cantifascist alliance\u201d between the United States and the Soviets. During the Cold War, he supported unilateral American disarmament and backed one Soviet propaganda campaign after the other. \u201cPut My Name Down, Brother, Where Do I Sign?\u201d he sang, calling for signatures on the Stockholm Peace Petition developed by KGB fronts in Europe.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">During the Vietnam war, Seeger not only helped lead the antiwar movement, he also sang in praise of the brutal Ho Chi Minh. Lyndon B. Johnson was called \u201ca big fool\u201d in one of his most famous songs, while he sang of Ho Chi Minh: <em>He educated all the people<\/em>, \/ <em>He demonstrated to the world, <\/em>\/ <em>If a man will stand for his<\/em> <em>own land, <\/em>\/ <em>He\u2019s got the strength of ten<\/em>.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">In 1999, Seeger traveled to Cuba to receive an award from the Castro regime. The fading Cuban tyrants honored him with their highest cultural award, given for \u201chumanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism,\u201d which was in and of itself a travesty. <strong>Accepting an award from Fidel Castro should make it clear that Seeger\u2019s would-be humanism and protest was aimed at one side only: his own country, which he clearly thought was led by the world\u2019s sole oppressors.&#0160;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">One cannot hope to be thought of as a defender of human rights and also accept an award from the Cuban police state. That, too, must be taken into consideration when evaluating what Pete Seeger really learned from his own Stalinist past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">In his last years, Seeger, who, in the period when the Soviet Union was briefly pro-Israel, sang songs in both Hebrew and Yiddish (including Israeli songs), gave his support to boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) against Israel, even to the extent that he handed over royalties from \u201cTurn, Turn, Turn\u201d to the movement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">A great folk singer who contributed much to the American story, he was fatally flawed by the leftism he imbibed with his mother\u2019s milk. How telling that a man who sought social justice, peace, and a livable world could, at the same time, believe that serving leftist tyrants was somehow compatible with his dream of universality and solidarity. <br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Ron Radosh, &quot;. . . &#39;The Hammer Song,&#39; known by most as \u201cIf I Had a Hammer,\u201d was written by Lee Hays (not Seeger) as a song to be used in defense of the indicted Communists, and not as a clarion call for brotherhood.&quot;&#0160; May of us were fooled way back when, we &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/02\/01\/saturday-night-at-the-oldies-pete-seeger-1919-2014\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Saturday Night at the Oldies: Pete Seeger (1919-2014)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}