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Not that the wingnuts of Commentary magazine are fixated on fighting 40-year-old battles. Oh no. Hey Kirchick, you weren’t even born then. Pete Seeger was boring by 1972, let alone now. Why don’t you find something relevant to object to, like, say, something from a minor English romantic poet?
Jim,Why aren’t we talking about past admirers of Trotsky?
John,
Seeger is as relevant now in the teaching/analysis of American political movements and political communication in the arts as he was when these folks were in power. He’s been blessed with a long life – and that blessing carries with it the opportunity for reflection and perspective.
Though Seeger has gently admitted some of his follies, many of those who profess the impact of Seeger, the Almanac Singers, the Weavers, and all their associates haven’t. Despite the historical perspective we now have, they’re blind to it.
Seeger’s own testimony would go a long way toward making that analysis richer and more honest – which is what we owe our students.
Wasn’t Pete the guy who wrote that queer hymn “this glans is your glans, this glans is my glans…” for his “penis partner”?
Yeah, #3, and Puff the Magic Dragon hooked a whole national on marijuana. Are you wingnuts EVER going to give it a rest?
I believe those who backed Stalin need to be held to account. It is disgraceful that the Left in Hollywood can carry on a 40 year war against Joseph McCarthy, spending millions on movies that tank, but a reference to the great world struggle of the 20th Century is not allowed even in reference who those are alive and participated in it. The commentors here are disgraceful. I also think, however, that if Ron Radosh can forgive an old spacey, lefty troboudour who renounced Stalin and violence at last, and is mainly known for patriotic sounding (to us) songs so can we. Radosh is not some softy on Lefty communists. There is a time when a man apologizes and you accept his apology. Seeger did it in a public forum in response to public criticism. That he did not hold a press conference hardly makes him an unrepentant Stalinist.
6
jjv Says:
January 21st, 2009 at 5:02 PM
I believe those who backed Stalin need to be held to account.
Lenin,trotsky????
It’s a good thing that Seeger wasn’t a member of the Alaska Independence Party. Boy, that would be really bad.
It’s a good thing that Seeger wasn’t a member of the Alaska Independence Party. Boy, that would be really bad.
I think it would be a hoot, nanny!
Stalin, a well-spoken, articulate, and clean Hitler.
As long as it is not too late for some to glorify the likes of Seeger,
it is not too late for others to debunk them.
Well, you have a point, #11. There are some who worship Pete Seeger, just like there are those who think Ayn Rand was anything more than a deeply kinky gal whose master allowed her to use his typewriter on weekends.
10
Thomas Aquinas Says:
January 21st, 2009 at 5:21 PM
Stalin, a well-spoken, articulate, and clean Hitler.
FDR,Churchill,Stalin;they worked well together. Don’t be so sanctimonious. It could have been Hitler and Stalin vs. FDR & Churchill;I’m glad S was with us.
Nobody here is objecting to Seeger’s erstwhile apologia for Uncle Joe.
Hell, everyone knows that this is my glans and that is your glans
What we do object to is making those very apologia for that blood-thirsty murderer into a REASON for giving the man a Peace Prize.
They gave it to Gore for a lie! They gave it to Arafat as a mea culpa! They gave it to Carter as a joke! But to give it to Pete Seeger for two songs that he wrote and because he had the brass to be a Stalinist…well, I wonder what FDR or JFK would say!
John,
I get the sense that one of us has some experience in how politics in the arts is taught at the university level – and that the other one is you.
Matthew, I suspect that one of us laughed our way through Atlas Shrugged and that the other one is you.
#13: “Stalin was with us.” Let that roll off your tongue (not mine) a few times, and taste it. (Be sure to prepare an impermeable receptacle.) THAT is the depth of wheelless’s idiocy.
Man, there’s nothing like rolling out these geriatric icons of popular culture to make us feel our age, is there?
When Bill Clinton was inaugurated, there was a lot of conservative commentary about how the “Sixties generation” was finally getting a crack at governing. Its zetigeist lingers on, haunting our national attic. I’m not sure anything is as emblematic of the “’60s-via-Clinton” retreadism in which the Obama administration appears to be steeped, as Pete Seeger’s prominence in the inaugural festivities.
Meanwhile the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t mean enough now for it to matter whom it’s awarded to. That said, awarding it to Seeger would appear to represent a new low. Presumably it won’t happen.
The Republicans have been refighting the 1960s for the last 40 years. They don’t realize that they lost the battle with the invention of the birth control pill. When that happen, the die was cast.
I’ve always wanted to read back issues of The Nation from the first half of the 20th century. I assume they were keen on the USSR, but just how bad were they (they being the magazine)?
One must not neglect to cite Howard Husock, “America’s Most Successful Communist” in City Journal:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_urbanities-communist.html
Pete Seeger has earnt America absolutely enormous sums of money -just think of the compounded interest on over 50 years of royalties , performance payments etc. Think of his spreading to a worldwide audience the american folk traditions.
Further it was Pete being so damn fabulous at everything musical that turned Bob Dylan to create his own stuff & further massive royalties for USA.
His views are not yours -but they are /have been those of hundreds of millions of people.
There are many more than 300 million admirers outside of America if you dont want him.
I have to say the Alaska Independence Party comment had me in stitches. Further, I don’t think being a Stalinist is a good reason to get a peace award. In any event, don’t you think it will go to Obama for umm…not being Bush? Also, when the 60′s began it was Democrats most against the pill. Even with it all these years later we don’t live in communes, we don’t hand over the country to dope smoking musicians (except on inaugaration day) and we only give peace so much of a chance until it starts to bother us. 75% of the GDP is still spent by the private sector, the Cold War came out our way. Overall a draw I’d say. And if the adherents of the pill and all it represents compete over time with those who dont? Well there’s a reason Utah and Mormonism are growing and Connecticut and Unitarianism is shrinking. As Chou Enlai said of the french revolution “its too soon to tell.”
And if Pete Seeger writes a ditty about the Alaskan Indpendence Party please post.
When I was an undergraduate I had the “pleasure” of being entertained by this troubadour and his fellow Stalinist Herbert Apthecker. This was long after Khrushchev had acknowledged some of the crimes of the gulag. The only peace Seegar deserves is that of the grave.
I finally found something that Hartland and I are of the same miind. Other than the discovery of Penicillin, the greatest effect of any drug on our society in the last century was definitely the pill.
This was a fantastic piece from Ron Radosh, August 2007 New York Sun (wow, do I miss that paper).
Seeger Speaks and Sings Against Stalin:
http://www.nysun.com/arts/seeger-speaks-and-sings-against-stalin/61666/
I finally found something that Hartland and I are of the same miind. Other than the discovery of Penicillin, the greatest effect of any drug on our society in the last century was definitely the pill.
Reliable contraception formally severed the link between sex and reproduction, and that shifted some tectonic plates. Once you’ve explicitly declared that doing the mambo ain’t necessarily for makin’ babies, you’ve undermined the ascetic basis of Western religion. That’s a big idea. Much bigger than the crap flung around here.
#24 You would be an admirer of Walter Florey who was awarded the Nobel prize for his work on Penicillin plus a fierce advocate for population control via contraception.
Florey was the recipient of criticism by the 1960s Overpopulation Crusaders for his penicillin discovery !! He was quite depressed. & feeling guilty & died not long after.
J.E. Dyer, I must take exception to the claim that a Nobel Peace Prize to Seeger would represent a new low. Please remember that Arafat got one.
I often think about all the people who must be suitable candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize because they have done more for the cause of peace than Arafat. For example almost everybody in the world. Even Pete Seeger.
Matt, what you have to realize is that after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, all those Stalinists like the editors of the Nation became admirers of Hitler for the duration. That should be bad enough fpr anyone.
#29, that’s pretty bad. Kind of reminds me of all these neocons who decided that both Nazi and Communist torture methods are just fine now.
I seem to have been mistaken in my claim that the Nation was part of the group that supported the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. However, it does seem that Pete Seeger was part of this group.
Being a commie means never having to say you’re sorry.
Now let’s get real. Like removing the names from our public schools of Pre-Civil War Presidents who were from the South & renaming them all after Pete S.
Funny, but if an old unreconstructed commie like Alger Hiss, or a commie apologist like Seeger lives to a ripe old age, he is suddenly reconstituted as a benign wise old man whose heart was in the right place, even if he kinda overlooked the, you know, bad things about the enslavers. Except if it’s an old enslaver apologist like Strom Thurmond.
Matt and Peter Shalen
In the 1930s and 40s The Nation, under Freda Kirchwey, was one of the few leftist publications eschew the Stalinist line. Kirchewy was also a supporter of Israel. That is not true today. Nowadays, under Katrina vanden Heuvel, the magazine fields a veritable stable of dogmatic vultures without sense or conscience.
Early yesterday, using a different handle, I commented there about their promotion of Pete Seeger, a Lenin Peace Prize winner.
oh well -argue on . a few weeks ago i bought egally “American Industrial Ballads & More ” therefore contributing $1 to America.
What have you lot earnt for America this year?
Ps I also bought an copyrighted Elvis umbrella & a set of Elvis bingo dubbers.
That is over $6.
On the cover Pete is wearing a very nice woollen jumper. I will play ‘Solidarity $ Ever ‘ just for Commentarians .
Jeez Mr. Hartland, Which Nazi and Communist torture methods? Breaking bones? Shooting limbs? Or making people who have ignored the rules of war to stand a long time in the cold. How many times? To preserve the regime through terror on its citizens or to extract life saving information from savages? How many died from the neocon torture methods? How many go fat under the miserable Guantanamo torture regime? Please.
Pete Seeger is the only American who ever became a multi-millionaire out of being a communist. But he is still writing anti-capitalist songs! Yet some of the greatest of our family memories are of car trips, singing “Goodnight Irene”, “Looking for Henry Lee” and “I ride an old paint” from one of his earliest albums. So I don’t begrudge him a nickel.
John Hartland is the author of “Reproduction Begins at Twelve”
There is an interesting sidelight to the Almanac Singers’ “Songs for John Doe,” featuring Seeger. It was a collection of anti-war songs, pointing out that the conflict in Europe was simply a clash of capitalists and imperialists, etc., and America should stay out.
It came out in May, 1941. After June 22, 1941 they pulled the album from distribution and tried to recall as many copies as they could, since suddenly the imperialist conflict had become a people’s war, or as they might have said, “Oceania is at war with Eurasia and always has been.”
Reason # 2,582 why I’m no longer a leftist is that being a staunch apologist and supporter for mass murder is considered among progressives at best a little quirk.
nacl,
Many thanks for your clarification in post #34. (Should I say you are worth your salt?)
Many Americans, especially our young generation, know very little about Stalinism. They can probably learn a lot from my new book on that topic. For details, see:
http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/revcom.html
Please share this link with those who might be interested. Comments would be appreciated,
kowalskiL@mail.montclair.edu
1. Does the Nobel Peace Prize have any credibility anyway?
2. Peace to a Communist often meant “America’s surrender though disarmament”.