Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Thsi Land is Your Land (and mine)

Short first post here:
This is one helluva week. Capped by the inauguration today, there is a feelgood vibe all around my house. Two nights ago, it began with the concert which was broadcast on HBO. Radio host Alex Bennett, who has been nothing but critical lately of everything Obama, was livid this morning that HBO had the rights to broadcast something that was done from public property (the Lincoln Memorial). Had Bennett been a bit more studious, he would have known that HBO offered up the show for free to everyone. In other words, it wasn't scrambled, and anyone with cable or satellite could have tuned in and enjoyed the entertainment. Bennett, who has lately begun to show signs of aging and slowing down (if bad radio is a sign of slowing down) and this morning I actually, for the first time, turned his show off to listen to music. He used to stand for something, and was a great broadcaster, but has become redundant of late and often tells the same stories that he told last week. If he called Obama an empty suit once, he called him that 1000 times. C'mon Alex...how many times can you say "he doesn't have the tool set to be president?" To his credit, Alex came around and got behind Obama. Of course, Booth got behind Lincoln, too, didn't he?
What I really wanted to get in here was the wonderful sight of Pete Seeger, 89, and almost mute from 75 years of singing, getting to perform with Bruce Springsteen in the penultimate number of the concert. Not only did he get all gazillion people singing along, he reclaimed Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land as our un-official national anthem, and there, in front of who knows how many millions watching, got to sing the so-called subversive verses that Guthrie originally included in his great song. Whoda thunk it? Times have changed, and it's about time.

2 comments:

  1. this is great...I misspelled the very first word of my new blog

    This this this this this...sorry, Mrs. Eck.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is thsi the only blog U have bsides your travel bolg?

    ReplyDelete