February 25, 1968
by digby
I don’t know why it just occurred to me that it’s been 50 years exactly since 1968. I have to assume there have been a thousand navel gazing essays that I’ve missed. It’s all ancient history now, of course.
But it’s interesting that we are in something of a similar situation today with the left fired up, a burgeoning youth movement, civil rights and equality at the center of our politics —- and shootings. Always the shootings. We don’t have big war (yet) thank God. (1968 would have 16,899 Americans killed in South Vietnam.) Today we have different threats, with climate change, a rising global far right movement and an information sea change that’s challenging the very concept of reality. But Americans have divided in the same way on either side of those threats. We always do.
Anyway, I was reminded by Professor Peter Dreier via email today of an event that took place on this day back in 1968 and he graciously allowed me to reproduce it here:
I’m shocked that the media (mainstream and left) overlooked this important milestone in American musical and political history. Fifty years ago today (February 25, 1968) Pete Seeger sang the controversial anti-war song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour show on CBS. Pete had been blacklisted from network television since the 1950s because of his leftist politics, so for the Smothers brothers to invite him to sing on their popular show — much less to sing a powerful anti-war song in the midst of the Vietnam war — was an act of courage.
What made Pete’s appearance on February 25, 1968 controversial was that he had performed “Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers show the previous September, but CBS refused to broadcast it and removed it from the tape. An angry Tom Smothers made sure that the story of the censorship appeared in the media. Because of the bad press, an outcry among the public, and probably because the Vietnam War had become even more unpopular, the Smothers Brothers were allowed to invite Seeger back later in the season, when he again sang “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” which was clearly metaphor for the Vietnam war.
Pete first sang a medley of anti-war song, then launched into “Big Muddy.” Here’s a video of Pete’s performance 50 years ago today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHETC5qAnqo. For those unfamiliar with Pete’s political and musical story, here’s my tribute to him, published in The Nation after he died in 2014: https://www.thenation.com/article/pete-seeger-brought-world-together/
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