Be warned: you will never, ever be able to unsee or unhear this. The adorable tykes are members of a Komsomol social and environmental justice youth choir mentored by Seeger. Me, I would rather watch Johnny Rotten singing “The Lonely Goatherd” with a chorus of toothless teenage meth-heads from deepest Mississippi. But that’s just me.
Hathos Hootenanny!
32 Responses to Hathos Hootenanny!
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philosopher says:
Huh? I’m at a total loss as to what’s bothering you about this. I was expecting something goopy with the kids singing, but musically the kids were fine; Seeger, of course, has no voice left, but heck, it’s Dylan, so that hardly matters. Is it because it’s supporting Amnesty International?
Really, what’s supposed to be the problem here?
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Darwin's S-list says:
It’s probably indecent of me to think this way, but I really dread the day when Seeger gives up the ghost because of all the hagiography we’ll be subjected to, most of which will dutifully ignore that his courageous idealism was suspiciously soft on some of the worst regimes of the 20th century.
Not to mention that it’ll be accompanied by more of his g-d-awful music.
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Edward Hamilton says:
First response: Wow, Pete Seeger is still alive, and even “singing”, kinda! If I’m still as active as he is when I reach that age, I’m not going to worry about bloggers snarking at me, I’ll just thank God for each extra day and do whatever suits my fancy. What he’s doing here isn’t any cornier than the songs at dozens of Christian day camps I attended as a kid, and I figure nonagenarian Unitarians have as much right to be corny goofballs as anyone else — and maybe a little more.
Second response: Yeah, yeah, he’s an old communist dupe who shilled for the Stalinists, but I think he and Rod might have a little more in common than one might expect. Here’s Seeger from 1995 in the NYT, with at least a small walkback. He’s naive, but he sounds like someone who realizes he’s naive and is relatively good-humored and self-deprecating about it. That in itself puts him head and shoulders above most rock activists. And the place he wants to be sounds to me like a good one.
“Q: How have your politics changed?
A: I like to say I’m more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other. My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around ’38. I drifted out in the 50′s. I apologize [ in his recent book ] for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.
I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail. As my father used to say: “The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around and say it’s somewhere in there.”
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Steven Donegal says:
Let’s get tribal. As bad as this is, it’s still better than anything by Lee Greenwood.
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True — but that’s the soft bigotry of low expectations we’ve been told about.
I wish you hadn’t brought up Lee Greenwood. Now I’ll never be able to get to sleep with that industrial-grade kitsch sloshing around the inside of my head.
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John E. says:
I’ve learned over the years to take Rod’s warnings seriously, and so did not click…
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Grumpy Old Man says:
This sort of discussion always puts me in mind of Tom Lehrer on the Spanish Civil War–”They won the war, but we had all the good songs.”
Not true, actually. The Italian “Giovinezza” is one of the best marching songs ever written.
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Joseph D'Hippolito says:
“I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it”
Well, Pete, Christianity at least had a divine founder Who was the ultimate reflection of a holy, righteous, loving, merciful God. Marxism just had a philosopher studying in the British Muesum.
BTW, notice how Seeger avoids mentioning China, Cuba and North Korea?
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Turnip Ghost says:
I guess if you apologize, you can be forgiven. But his politics were paternalistic and Volvo Voter nonsense; Mainline Protestantism at its most ludicrous and self-satisfied.
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Rod, this is different from what Alexandra Pelosi has been doing . . . how?
I mean, apart from prosaically sh*tting on a bunch of little kids and an old man who has contributed more to American culture in his 90-odd years more than any of us likely would in 990 years.
So you don’t like folk music. Great. Not everyone’s cup of tea. And I know “social and environmental justice” is the boogieman of the American right. Fine. Everyone has a right to . . . etc., and so on and so forth.
But that justifies a rather nasty spasm of snark directed at an old man and a bunch of little kids over an actually pretty well-produced version of a classic Dylan song . . . how again?
If it’s because Seeger was once a commie — and now a repentant former commie — does the phrase “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” ring a bell?
You know, it’s easy to kick the sh*t out of Bill Maher (and, frankly, Rick Santorum’s appearance at the Greenwell Springs Baptist Church in Baton Rouge has me wondering whether I owe Bill and Alexandra some sort of apology), but it’s damned difficult to recognize the Maher in ourselves. And I’m talking about myself and everyone else equally here.
If we think what Maher did was despicable, maybe the one thing we can do about that right now is to think damn twice the next time we’re ready to go all Jerry Springer on whomever we’ve decided is a ridicule-worthy, major-league freak.
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Anduril says:
maybe the one thing we can do about that right now is to think damn twice the next time we’re ready to go all Jerry Springer on whomever we’ve decided is a ridicule-worthy, major-league freak.
I thought that was the raison d’etre of the internet…
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Rod, this is different from what Alexandra Pelosi has been doing . . . how?
Um, because I’m not actually trying to make a cheap political point about entire classes of people, only make a cheap joke about an extremely earnest project, terribly executed? What, we’re not allowed to make fun of anything or anybody anymore, ever? If this were 92-year-old Lee Greenwood and the Up With People Child Chorus croaking out “God Bless The USA,” I would be just as mean. I actually have a Pete Seeger album somewhere in the stacks, and it’s very good. But still, this thing is like PBS Pledge Week porn, and I reserve the right to snark freely about it.
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Jaybird says:
If I live to be Pete Seeger’s age, I hope I have the energy and love fof life that he does.
That said, I’ve always thought this song was overly maudlin and saccharine, and putting 90-year old Pete Seeger next to a kid’s choir is cranking the cheap sentimentality to 11. Bleh.
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Peter B. Nelson says:
Hee, hee, hee, ho, ho, ho (that’s antewebuvian for LOL). Thanks for lightening the tone around here.
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Lulu says:
A few months ago, as I was on the way to my (graveyard) shift, there was a traffic jam. “Damn! I’m gonna be late,” thought I. Then I heard “This Little Light of Mine” but with unfamiliar lyrics. “Occupy, Ninety-nine, I’m gonna make it shine . . .” Who was impeding my progress? None other than ancient Pete Seeger and a crowd of OWSers, all chanting those garbled words.
So I guess I don’t need to watch the clip . . . -
tmatt says:
Turn it up!
The man in black meets the pig in pink:
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Jane says:
Rod, you can have permission to take pot shots at aged idealistic lefties (who have even apologized) when you spend an equal amount of time making fun of aged conservatives who ramble on and on about “Southern honor” and the like. Wait, make that ten times as much, because I’m unaware of any of them apologizing for their support of segregation.
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TWylite says:
I still suspect “Up With People” has some kind of sinister hidden meaning like “To Serve Man”.
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Brett R. says:
At least he has an awesome band. Bela Fleck on banjo! Good on ya Pete.
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Hector_St_Clare says:
“I like to say I’m more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other. My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around ’38. I drifted out in the 50′s. I apologize [ in his recent book ] for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.
“I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail. As my father used to say: “The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around and say it’s somewhere in there.””
Wow, this is really well said.
I like Seeger, and I like PBS. Lee Greenwood, not so much.
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sea octopus says:
Alphaville’s “forever young” is highly cringe-worthy
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Illuminating comments, as usual. That’s what I like about Rod and his people — they may be tribal (we’re all tribal, after all) but they’re not close-minded.
I meet Pete Seeger once, way back in the 60′s, at an ourdoor show in the Bay Area. He was taking a break from the show and myself and a couple of other kids found him hiding out behind the stage having lunch with a friend or two. He gave us autographs, as long as we promised not to tell. He’s a sweetheart, people, even if he foolishly defended communism for too long. Heck, folks on the other side of the political spectrum have been known to defend right-wing tyrants too.
Doubters, please read this superb profile from the New Yorker, a few years back.
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What, we’re not allowed to make fun of anything or anybody anymore, ever? If this were 92-year-old Lee Greenwood and the Up With People Child Chorus croaking out “God Bless The USA,” I would be just as mean. I actually have a Pete Seeger album somewhere in the stacks, and it’s very good. But still, this thing is like PBS Pledge Week porn, and I reserve the right to snark freely about it.
Rod, there are plenty of things we’re allowed to make fun of and, indeed, ought to make fun of because ridicule is the only argument the world understands much anymore.
The Pete Seeger video was not one of those things. I used to work in Catholic radio; I’ve seen and heard MUCH worse than this. In fact, as someone who is regularly tortured with Marty Haugen’s greatest hits — in the name of God, no less, which one ought to find downright offensive on many levels — I find the 90-something Pete and a choir of cute kids singing Dylan to be a vast improvement.
I’d have no problem with you unloading on that awful Lee Greenwood song because there are so many substantive reasons to do so apart from its artistic deficiencies. For one thing, I hate it when false pride, self-congratulation and jingoism get conflated with patriotism.
But sometimes it’s better to “just leave it alone,” especially when not leaving it alone involves being publicly mean to an earnest old man and a bunch of earnest little kids who were doing their best.
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If Pete Seeger could still sing, or if he had given a performance without being surrounded by the Young Social Justice Chorale, I wouldn’t have noticed. As it is, though, I agree with my liberal reader Jaybird, whose stomach turns at the sentimentality on display. This is a pretty egregious example of leftie kitsch. Of course the right has its own kitsch too.
Besides, I don’t think that saying “at least it’s not as gut-churningly saccharine as Marty Haugen” is much of a defense. And as you know from reading my stuff over the years, I’ve been very snarky about Marty Haugen’s work.
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Sean says:
Pete Seeger is a sweet old guy, whose main message has always been love and togetherness. Cheesy? You betcha. Cringe-worthy? That too, sometimes.
One thing I’ve always appreciated about him is that he’s the rare performer who makes it a point to get his audience singing. This never comes across on recordings, but when you’re there, singing with the entire audience, it’s a lot like being in church. Where the rest of the musical world screams “look at me!” Seeger has said: “Look at us!” There’s value to that.
Rod can blog about hathos all he wants, as far as I’m concerned. Is this a bit tribal? Sure it is. If Rod repeated every leftie opinion I subscribe to, I wouldn’t read him.
@Joseph D’Hippolito: BTW, notice how Seeger avoids mentioning China, Cuba and North Korea?
Yes, because every time a former supporter of one or several regimes apologizes, he has to go methodically down the list of every other regime he objects to, or else he obviously still supports them. If I were Seeger, I’d probably just wear a list of everything I used to believe and no longer do around my neck, in anticipation of your completely reasonable criticism.
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Rod, when you’re getting hit in the head with a Haugen 2-by-4 Sunday after ever-lovin’ Sunday, you don’t notice anymore when an old man and a bunch of enviro-kids accidentally step on your toe.
Would I buy the Pete Seeger/social-justice kids recording? No. Do I think Pete Seeger’s long and accomplished career earns him a pass? Probably.
Is it so much better than the liturgical lounge lizardry I am regularly subjected to — as, no doubt, the modern version of a hair shirt and other old-time mortification — that I’m not going to sweat it and am unwilling to be mean to the elderly and kids for the sake of artistic purity? Oh, God, yes!
You can say I’m just being “Midwestern nice” over this, but that beats being Midwestern mean. Although, a la Madea, I did tell my wife today that “I shot Tyga!”
Well, at least I would have if Honey Cocaine hadn’t got in the damn way.
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So vapid, so simpering, so prim. And so dull and earnest. Quakerism and Unitarianism rolled up into a granola ball and coated with an extra layer of WASP goodness.
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Pete Seeger’s getting old. As someone who was around ten when the slogan “Don’t trust anyone over 30″ was being batted around by people who have always been older than me, and are now in their sixties and seventies, I might add that none of us stay forever young, and thank God for that. There’s always a time to go, although I’d like to stick around a while. On the other hand, if Fidel Castro had instituted term limits, his experiment might be a vibrant exercise in popular democracy rather than the dead weight of an old man’s dream on those who ARE young.
These kids need to spend less time singing and more time going off to work with Paul Farmer in Haiti.
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Thomas Aquinas says:
Seeger, old Stalinist who will never be forced to apologize for his vile affections. (In fact, Clinton gave him a Kennedy Center Honor!) He only cozied up to left wing mass murderers. But because he didn’t call Sandra Fluke a slut, he’s fine.
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Just found out that Seeger did apologize. My bad. He’s a much better than me. I don’t like his politics, but it seems he is eminently decent.
John Haas 
could we just grab those kids and ship them to Louisiana or Texas for the summer? need to get them away from folks like old Pete. can we send an accreditation team to their school?
now I need to go get 3 fingers of Macallan to cleanse my mind of this drivel