Comments on: Friday Woody Guthrie blogging

By: deliasmith

deliasmith — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:17:47 +0000

Peter @ 23: Thanks for that, a collector’s item.

Note to Chris and other contributors: Always include a simple timeline when any post starts with, or begins to move in the direction of, a discussion of history. (‘History’, it would be safest to assume, being anything that hasn’t been on the TV news in the past four weeks.)

By: Ben Alpers

Ben Alpers — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:05:08 +0000

McCain/Palin: She's a little bit country; he's a little bit rock'n'roll.

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 06:21:13 +0000

Rock and Roll First
Then Country

By: Josh in Philly

Josh in Philly — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:46:08 +0000

“Sinking of the Reuben James” was Woody’s song too, not Pete’s.

By: nick s

nick s — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:07:04 +0000

Are we allowed to bring up Carlene Carter here?

By: Antti Nannimus

Antti Nannimus — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:57:29 +0000

Hie]

[cough cough.., teer gasd ] yer ummble servant reportin from Repugnant Covenchen n stPaul MN… [coff coff ow oww!]

Cuntry 1Fist!

[oow cough hack ouch STOP IT! ow maced inmafa face]

gotta run oops undr rest bak2yer latr.

hav a niz911 da!!

Anti

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:56:31 +0000

The Google tells me that The Gateway Singers were a West Coast group descendant from The Weavers and ancestral to The Limeliters, the Kingston Trio, and The Hog Farm Collective.

By: Adam

Adam — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:26:10 +0000

Rea

Are you suggesting that:

If Saddam had reacted to 9-11 by declaring war on us in support of al Qaeda then Saddam would have been responsible for 9-11?

UR DOIN IT WRNG!!

John H.

If the US hadn’t talked up partnership with Georgia then Mikheil Saakashvili might not have been so aggressive wrt Russia. That doesn’t mean a hypothetical Russian folk singer who claimed the US attacked Russia would be any less full of it.

And I like Woodie Guthrie. After listening to this I switched to This Land and Do Re Mi.

By: rea

rea — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:48:58 +0000

Blaming the Germans for pearl harbor is about as legitimate as blaming Saddam Hussein for 9-11.

That itself would be a legitimate claim only if Saddam had reacted to 9-11 by declaring war on us in support of al Qaeda.

By: Gene O'Grady

Gene O'Grady — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:07:58 +0000

Just to show how old I am, I learned the Reuben James (aka Wildwood Flower) from my mother’s Gateway Singers album more than fifty years ago.

Has anyone else ever heard of the Gateway Singers?

By: abb1

abb1 — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:34:44 +0000

@22 – what do you mean, who were these strange bedfellows in December 1941?

By: peter

peter — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:42:49 +0000

Jon H at #19: “Well, if there wasn’t a pact between Japan and Germany, Japan might well have not risked attacking the US.”

And the Japanese regime only took the risk of attacking the USA because they believed (correctly) that they would not then be counter-attacked by the USSR. Fascist dictatorships make strange bedfellows.

By: Stuart Elliott

Stuart Elliott — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:25:46 +0000

Woody was for isolationism before he was against it before he was for it.

He turned just as the CPUSA turned as Stalin turned.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:57:59 +0000

I’d never known there was any other song called “Reuben James” than the Kenny Rogers & The First Edition one, which a bit of YouTube research reveals is a lot more fun.

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:35:38 +0000

Re. the Wikipedia article Novakant linked to, and its level of detail and interest in internal party politics: It’s sort of funny the way a certain kind of communist and ex-Communist is possibly more obsessed than any other group with getting the history right. I think it’s going out with Irving Kristol’s generation, though.

But they do tend to give Stalin more credit for inventing evil than could really be plausible, if you stop and think about it.