5 Feet of Fury

If I Had a Sickle: My NEW Taki’s column, on Pete Seeger

I owe Alex at HollywoodLoser a bunch of beers for suggesting that title.

(And yes, there’s a typo that needs fixing. My [autocorrect] bad. They’ve been alerted.)

Haven’t peeked at the comments yet…

Speaking of songs, Seeger’s blatantly hypocritical career brings to mind a variation on that old Richard Jeni riff on “A Horse With No Name”:

Pete: You were born to bourgeois parents. You ended up a millionaire. Buy the freakin’ hammer!

Seeger did have an axe, though, which he reportedly used to try to cut Dylan’s power at Newport. If that story isn’t true, it should be.

At least latter-day folkie Bruce Cockburn’s much-mocked answer song “If I Had A Rocket Launcher” acknowledged his ambiguous feelings about power, politics, and peace. Seeger’s bottom line, and the delicious sensation of getting his bony butt kissed by other useful idiots, would never permit such introspection.