Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Pete Seeger

12 Comments

I love this line in this NPR puff piece:

Seeger actually was a member of the Communist Party in those early days, though he later said he quit after coming to understand the evils of Josef Stalin.

Yeah. You know when he came to “understand the evils of Josef Stalin”? Not until the nineties. He was in his seventies before he figured out what I knew as a kid in the sixties.

[Update a while later]

Glossing over the dark side:

As an apology Seeger’s words are underwhelming. While “cruel misleader” is by no means a term of endearment, in light of Stalin’s monstrous record, it vastly understates the depth of his depravity and the true horror of Stalinism. There are many more apt nouns and adjectives in the English language to describe the man who gave us the purges of the Great Terror, the Gulag, and the Ukrainian Terror Famine. Lost in the obfuscations of Seeger’s moral equivalencies is the fact that contemporary Christians, White people, and Mongolians are not responsible for the acts, however heinous, of Christians, white people, or Mongolians of the past, because they had nothing to do with them. Whereas Seeger is all too culpable for the crimes of Stalin because he was an open apologist for “old cruel Joe” and other communist thugs at the very time they were slaughtering millions.

Yes.

[Late-morning update]

If only Leni Riefenstahl was a communist like Pete Seeger.

12 thoughts on “Pete Seeger”

  1. My standard approach to warm fuzzy articles like that is to substitute the word “Nazi” for the word “Communist” (given that the Commies killed many more people over a much longer period), and then ask myself “would the article have been published if said celebrity had been a Nazi?”

    1. “would the article have been published if said celebrity had been a Nazi?”

      Yes, as long as they were a leftist.

  2. My co-worker told me today that Seeger died. When I asked her who he was, she seemed a little peeved. That’s Seattle for ya.

  3. Scanned the comments on the Guardian’s obituary this morning: uniformly positive.

    He may have given popular cover to Stalin and the fractional gigacasualty tyranny of communism generally, but gee, he sure gave a lot of lefties happy childhood memories!

  4. There are a lot of defenses of communism in the NPR comments and some claiming communism doesn’t even exist. That doesn’t say much for our intellectual community.

    I do agree with the people commenting that we can appreciate artists without agreeing with their ideology or there lifestyle.

  5. I’ve developed a great appreciation for the phrase “Speak no ill of the dead”.

    It’s a useful rule for the civilized man.

    1. Hitler and Stalin were genocidal power-mad dictators. I’m glad they’re dead and I hope they rot in hell. Their deluded followers ranged from dupes to stooges to accomplices.

      That wasn’t so hard, was it?

    2. I have developed one for calling a spade a spade. I think candor is something more essential to civilization.

    3. I tend to agree, at least on the day of a person’s death. No need to rain on the pity parade. It isn’t a universal sentiment. Did you see the reaction when Thatcher died? Obama didn’t even go to the funeral, what an insult. But I guess we know some people don’t like communists and some people don’t like Thatcher. It says a lot if you spend some time thinking about the distinctions.

      1. If you don’t have anything good to say, say nothing.

        If Obama passed on the thatcher funeral, he could always ask
        the VP, the Sec of State or the Ambassador to show up.

        I doubt Obama had any really great warm feelings towards Dame Thatcher.

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