It has become a fad to bid goodbye to 2020 while proclaiming it “the worst year ever.” Of course, and I say of course realizing that most people have no idea why I would say “of course,” one only thinks it was the worst year ever if one doesn’t know much about all the other terrible years, thanks in part to our atrocious education system’s inability to teach either the substance of history or its importance to new generations.
The delusion fits nicely into the Left’s Big Lie that everything was terrible because Donald Trump was President. But as bad as the year behind us was, and there is no question about that, liberty and the identity of America were facing equally dire threats when the nation had been terrified out of its metaphorical gourd by Communist propaganda and Right Wing doomsayers. Luckily for us, “cooler heads prevailed,” but that was just luck. Let’s look back on a largely forgotten incident that occurred on this date in 1962, one of the really bad years.
On January 2, 1962, the reunited folk group the Weavers (Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Pete Seeger) was scheduled to appear on The Jack Paar Show. Paar, if his name doesn’t ring a bell for you, was the most quirky and intellectually complex of the “Tonight Show” hosts, and in 1962 had a quirky, intellectually complex hour-long prim -time show on NBC following Johnny Carson’s taking over the late night franchise.
Before taping, the Weavers were told by NBC officials that their appearance was contingent upon their signing a statement disavowing the Communist party. Every member of the Weavers refused to sign, and the appearance was cancelled.
Some perspective is necessary. The Weavers were one of the most popular performing and recording groups of the 1950s, but they were undoubtedly radically Left by the standards of the time. Founder Pete Seeger wasn’t just pro-union; it would be fair to say he was pro-Stalin, in the dreamy-eyed, naive way that other American liberals were (Bernie Sanders comes to mind). But he was a brilliant performer and song-writer, and his group sensibly confined its material to non-political topics: the Weavers’ big hits were “Goodnight Irene,” a #1 record for 13 weeks in the summer and fall of 1950, “Midnight Special” and “On Top of Old Smoky.” But the Red Scare of the early 1950s still hit them hard. During the 1930s when Communism was “in,” the members of the group were all enthusiasts. When news of the pre-Weavers Weavers’ political past got out, they were, in modern terms, canceled. A planned television show was killed. The group’s four members were placed under FBI surveillance. Seeger was grilled by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Decca cancelled their recording contract in 1951; concert venues refused to book them, and their records were pulled from the radio. Two years later, virtually blocked from performing, The Weavers broke up.
Ethics Alarms 