A Tale of Two Lives http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=13851
In the wake of Robert McNamara's death, some thoughts on Pete Seeger Wednesday, July 15, 2009 By Alan Bisbort Robert Strange McNamara died last week at age 93. The front-page headline attached to the New York Times obituary (superbly written by Tim Weiner) identified him simply as "Architect of Futile War." That "futile war" was, of course, Vietnam, the futility of which the Times itself helped expose with the June 1972 publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret 47-volume study commissioned by then-Secretary of Defense McNamara and officially called "History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy, 1945-1967." The Pentagon Papers were an indictment of a failed, secret government policy, based on lies and murder that had by the time the Times published excerpts put half a million Americans in harm's way for no good reason. In contrast to the grim reminders of McNamara's legacy which he himself agonized over during the later years of his life (see: Errol Morris' The Fog of War) the agelessly sunny folksinger, peace activist, environmentalist and humanitarian Pete Seeger just celebrated his 90th birthday at Madison Square Garden. Bruce Springsteen, Roger McGuinn, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez and many other musicians paid homage to his musical legacy. Seeger, whom one might say is the anti-Robert McNamara, gave all the proceeds from the concert to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a group he created to clean up the river. Earlier this year, Seeger led the crowd at the Barack Obama inaugural concert in a rendition of his old friend (and fellow member of his first group, the Almanac Singers) Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." He earned the privilege. At the height of the Vietnam War, Seeger released his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," which was based on the true story of an officer who, despite warnings to the contrary from his sergeant, led his platoon into a river that was too deep to cross; when the officer drowned, the sergeant turned the platoon around. Seeger sang the song on the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," but his segment was cut by the network censors because they felt the line, "Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on" was disrespectful to Lyndon Johnson. Years before that, at the height of the witch-hunting days of the 1950s, Seeger was called before Congressional committee but refused to "name names." He was convicted of "contempt of court" and given a 10-year prison sentence, overturned on appeal the next year. Seeger lives just across the Connecticut border, in Beacon, N.Y. He moved to this neck of the woods 60 years ago, and it's a measure of the man that he has lived simply among us, much of the time in a log cabin that he himself built, without calling media attention to himself. After reading Alec Wilkinson's recently published thin but touching "portrait" of Seeger, The Protest Singer (Knopf), I am finding it hard to think of another living American over the past several decades who comes closer to embodying the ideal of a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King than Seeger. A friend of mine who organizes folk concerts at his Southington church told me that Seeger agreed to play for free if someone would drive over to Beacon and pick him up. That was his only stipulation, and one of his few concessions to his age he can't drive any more. Seeger has another connection to New England. He's a graduate of the Avon Old Farms boys' school in Avon, Conn. Last year at this time, the school honored Seeger by naming him the first recipient of its Distinguished Alumnus Award. Engraved on a stone beneath a campus tree is this message: "Avon Old Farms School presents the 2008 Distinguished Alumnus Award to Pete Seeger '36 A great American and citizen of the world whose music has inspired generations to take care of the earth and each other." Pete Seeger's obituary will eventually be on the front page of the New York Times, just as McNamara's was. The word "futile" will not appear in the headline. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
