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4th Of July From NPR An interview with Pete Seeger No posting over the weekend - I was on the go. A fellow gave me some large format photographic equipment if I would come to his place and haul it away, so I spent the weekend on the road. And an interesting time it was. On Saturday morning, I quickly out distanced the AM stations, so I switched to FM. It seemed that all I could receive well were the NPR stations. Back when I was beginning the TV news business, I listened to NPR a lot - they write well for broadcast and do a good job, technically, with stories. On Saturday morning, I thought I'd hear what Scott Simon had to say. And in his promo, he said they would have a special 4th of July weekend interview with a great American. I just had to hear who it was that Scott Simon regarded as a great American. Are you ready? Pete Seeger. That's right, Pete Seeger. But, but didn't he admit on PBS that he's a communist? "We used to go around calling ourselves communists," he told Scott Simon, who failed to ask any followup question. Seeger admitted that, perhaps, he had been a bit too enthusiastic about Josef Stalin. Seeger said he simply thought that Stalin was a forceful person at the time. Instead of the mass murderer he was, I guess. But, what about "If I Had A Hammer." Wasn't that a communist song? Seeger told Scott that a lot of people thought the song was written for a specific communist rally. He said he was sorry to disappoint people, but that was not the case. Scott didn't ask the followup question, "But was the hammer the hammer of the Soviets?" All in all and namby-pamby, soft Scott Simon interview in which a totalitarian is allowed to excuse himself. |
