That song is a meme, and because of what you said, it was able to slip itself into the consciousness of everyone in the country, so you wind up with yourself a communist anthem on the billboard charts for 10 weeks, and soon enough they’re teaching all the children it. It’s just a song, but it bugs me, looking back, considering where we are now.
Do you remember the feel of the Civil Rights marches? Jesse Jackson lived on our floor, having taken over our apartment because he had children and we had a bigger apartment. While he was in Selma, they posted notices on the cafeteria door of where people were and that they were safe. I objected to a lot of Jesse’s work. I wrote nasty notes on his Operation Breadbasket signs in the laundry room. But there was no question that in those days people were singing about justice in a way that changed the world for the better. That’s how I remember that song. With pleasure.
Captain Kangaroo and Pete Seeger... good old CBS.