Just when you thought Occupy Wall Street hadn’t a single new idea in its pretty little empty head, the geniuses dust off the old banjo Bolshevik. From The New York Times, “Pete Seeger Leads Protesters, On Foot And In Song“:
Mr. Seeger, whose activist credentials go back at least as far as a benefit concert that he and Woody Guthrie did for California migrant workers in 1940 and who wrote or helped write populist ballads like like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer,” …set off south, walking at a brisk pace and accompanied by a crowd of about 600, some of them carrying placards declaring support for the self-declared 99 percent that have been occupying Zuccotti Park for five weeks…
“He’s a symbol of the peace movement,” said one of the marchers, Larry Manzino, a retired research scientist from Piscataway, N.J. “He’s a guy who never caved, a guy who had integrity, a guy who stood up and said no when he had to.”
“A guy who had integrity” is leftie code for “didn’t repudiate Stalin until half-a-century after the old monster had died”, as Seeger belatedly did in 2009. “Activist credentials” is the preferred New York Times euphemism for being reliably wrong on every single issue for the last 70 years, starting with his opposition to the Second World War. (Not to mention he ripped off Solomon Linda, the black South African author of “Wimoweh”, who died penniless. Because, unlike poor Mr Linda, Mr Seeger was shrewd enough to have a – what’s the word? – “corporation” to protect his business interests.)
But good for OWS at finally finding the perfect soundtrack for its fresh youthful idealism. I believe Pete serenaded the Zuccotti Park crowd with his searing protest song, “Where Have All The Showers Gone?”
(Knit-cap tip: Ed Driscoll.)