Friday Woody Guthrie blogging

So John Blutarski was right: it was the Germans who attacked Pearl Harbor!

D-Day: War’s over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: Over? Did you say “over”? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he’s rolling.

I do think it’s interesting that McCain decided to use “Country First” instead of “America First.”

I’m sure that decision was in part due to the continuing negative connotations of “America First,” both in its connection to Lindbergh and other Americans actually sympathetic to Nazi Germany and, more broadly, its association with isolationism, which is the furthest thing from McCain’s rather aggressively interventionist foreign policy (which back in 2000 was being sold as “National Greatness Conservatism” by a variety of neoconservatives in McCain’s camp).

But “Country First” also has other connotations that “America First” doesn’t. “Country” is the opposite of “city.” And of course it’s also a kind of music that is well-represented at McCain events. Both, I think, can do duty as racial dog whistles for those looking for such things. John McCain may be “country”; Sarah Palin certainly is. Barack Obama most definitely is not.

It seems to me that Guthrie was arguing that the people would put America first, even if the elite won’t.

To me what the lyrics imply is that “common working people” need to realize that wealth and power doesn’t have their best interest in mind. Or in other words working people need to develop an awareness of the true intentions of the elites and to see through their lies.

Strongly agree with noen @5. The tendency of the American working class to vote against its own best interests is what Guthrie’s singing about.

@2: It seems to me that Guthrie was arguing that the people would put America first, even if the elite won’t.

The guy was a communist, so there is no “people” and no “America”. There are “common working people” and those “wearin’ the silver chain”.

Pete Seeger’s song “Reuben James” was a pro-war song in 1941 and an anti-war song in the Sixties. A few lines were changed or added. Earlier in 1941 Seeger and crew had made an entire anti-war album, “Songs for John Doe”, but then the Stalin-Hitler pact collapsed.

More about that and other stuff at my URL.

Full information on “Songs for John Doe”, including lyrics, at my URL.

I really like Woody Guthrie, but the goal of this song is to get Americans to support greater efforts in WWII. Because Hitler was attacking the USSR. Nothing deeper here folks…

What is great about this song is how simple it is, how repetitive, and how strongly it stays on message. Blaming the Germans for pearl harbor is about as legitimate as blaming Saddam Hussein for 9-11.

But so what? Screw nuance, this is the kind of message discipline the Democrats need to embrace if they want to push true social reforms.

I suspect that the word has evolved.

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

Well, if there wasn’t a pact between Japan and Germany, Japan might well have not risked attacking the US.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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