Seeger doc depicts 'power of song' but no 'stupid things I've done'

Pete Seeger, influential folk singer and activist who was persecuted during the second Red Scare for his former membership in the Communist Party, criticized this week's American Masters profile of him, "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song," because it "didn't show any of the stupid things I've done." (Part of a broader story about Seeger and the film in the Washington Post.) Director Jim Brown didn't try to make a totally balanced film, according to Susan Lacy, executive producer of American Masters (as paraphrased by the Post). "That's not meant in a negative way," Lacy is quoted as saying. "It's just that Pete Seeger is such a principled idealist, such a good man." Not surprisingly, conservative media watchdog NewsBusters has jumped on the doc.