If you are a fan of the TV show “Weeds”, you know the song “Little Boxes”, which is used as its theme as sung by Regina Spektor. Written by folk music legend Malvina Reynolds, the song is also closely identified with Pete Seeger:
You might also like this short video by writer-filmmaker William Hoffman, featuring contemporary folk singer Chuck E. Costa
Among the e-mail in my inbox this morning was a note from a group that is trying to convince the Nobel Prize Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to folk singer and life-long activist Pete Seeger.
Seeger’s causes have been many and varied throughout his life, beginning with the labor movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and these days with environmental issues, but every single one of his causes has ultimately boiled down to making the world a better, more tolerant, more peaceful place for everyone. His critics are not without merit as they point out his involvement with Communist politics in the ’30s and ’40s and the desire of his supprters and Seeger himself to downplay that time, but, like many who got involved with the Communist Party in the United States in those years, he clearly did so out of the idealism that the Soviet Communists promoted overseas and, more relevantly, out of reaction to the gathering storm of Fascism spreading across Europe. The decades after World War II and Seeger’s unmatched devotion to peace and freedom surely outweigh the complicated political positions many were forced to choose during a dangerous time.
The solicitation I got said that the group has found a member of Congress to consider being the the official submitter of Pete Seeger’s name to the Nobel Comittee (not surprisingly, Congresswoman Lee represents Berkeley, California and surrounding towns; too bad they couldn’t get Mike Capuano to join in, given Seeger’s close ties to Cambridge and Harvard). They want people to submit comments to Congresswoman Lee’s office to sway her to do it, which will pave the path for the actual submission. Meanwhile, they’ve collected nearly 20,000 signatures for an online petition to send to the Nobel Prize Committee to try to convnice them to actually give Seeger the award (the original goal of the petition was to convince the American Friends Service Committee to nominate Seeger, but with the congressional rep on board they can right for the judges). I signed it, but if you want to go a little further you can make a donation to the group that’s doing all this lobbying, although I would bet that Pete Seeger himself would prefer that you make a donation to some group in your own community that actively works toward a better world.
I really hope they pull this off. There are undoubtedly many people in the world doing fine work for the causes of peace, justice and equality, but Pete Seeger has lived his whole life for it and truly deserves the recognition.
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.
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