Media Encomiums for Pete Seeger Omit Radical Background
In announcing the death of folksinger Pete Seeger (shown) Monday night at the age of 94, the mainstream media applauded his lifetime of singing, as the Washington Post put it, “songs of love, peace, brotherhood, work and protest” and called him a "20th-century troubadour” known for popularizing “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and especially the “anthem of the civil rights movement”: “We Shall Overcome.”
The Post noted only briefly Seeger’s close relationship with Woody Guthrie, from whom he “learned to express political and social criticism through music and song.” The Almanac Singers, founded by Seeger, were given scant mention, the paper referring to members Guthrie and Seeger as “colleagues” rather than the more appropriate appellation “comrades.”
The Post couldn't wait to get past all that now-irrelevant history to spend the rest of its paean of praise in how the...