3QuarksDaily pointed me to this article from the May/June issue of Boston Review by historian William Hogeland, where he tries to re-contextualize two very different but inter-related icons of recent American political history: folk musician and left-wing activist Pete Seeger, and right-wing writer and commentator William F. Buckley, Jr.

Hogeland reminds us that neither man was quite as authentic as they both wanted us to believe: Seeger was the son of a pair of Harvard professors and grew up in upper-middle-class surroundings. Even though his parents were politically active in the leftist movements of their time, his early efforts to portray himself as a “common working man” were for show. Buckley came to prominence as a young man through his efforts against the Civil Rights movement, and then spent much of the rest of his career trying to avoid being tagged as a racist. The tie that binds them together is the McCarthy Era and the witch hunt for Communists that rendered Seeger an outcast for nearly 20 years; Buckley, like most Republicans of the time, lined up squarely behind McCarthy.

It’s a very interesting piece, clearly written with the intent of bringing down a notch or two the pedestals erected to each man by their respective camps in recent years. Hogeland is particularly critical of the recent PBS documentary about Seeger, which glides very lightly over Seeger’s role in the Communist Party during the years leading up to and through World War II. He’s less critical of the hagiographic treatment of Buckley following his death earlier this year, instead focusing on the harsh criticisms of left-wing bloggers, and overall the article is much kinder to Buckley than Seeger, but this next-to-last paragraph acknowledges the legacy-buffing of both sides:

Liberals may concur in calling Seeger’s Stalinism romantic, if unfortunate (although “American Masters” viewers are not supposed to; the Stalinism is not supposed to exist). But liberals may also feel that “romantic” softens the virulence of Buckley’s race ideas, letting him off too easily. Buckleyites, for their part, cannot call segregationism romantic, since they have left its central importance out of their story—and they are likely to feel that the adjective understates the evil done by Seeger’s Soviet loyalties. Each side in this story has become adept not only at falsifying its own narrative but also at picking apart the other’s fallacies to expose venal motives. It is unfortunate that each side, in accusing the other of bad faith, so often seems to be right.

For your added amusement, here are two YouTube clips, one is a montage of photos of labor protests with an audio clip of Pete Seeger singing a pro-union song, the other is part of the infamous debate between Buckley and Gore Vidal on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968 where Vidal calls Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” and Buckley threatens to punch Vidal in the mouth.