But the Colorscape Chenango Arts Festival committed a massive injustice by booking...and then kicking out...PETER YARROW.
Yes, PETER YARROW. The "Puff the Magic Dragon" guy, part of the beloved and well remembered PETER PAUL AND MARY trio.
The kindly man who has donated his time and energy to good causes for more than 50 years.
Now, at age 81, an incident from 1970 (he accidentally opened his hotel room door, nude, and a 14 year-old girl saw him) is now BACK in the news. All because a cornball upstate New York festival announced that a few gossipy hens were OFFENDED that he had been booked!
YES, NATIONAL NEWS. Here's the MIAMI HERALD picking up on the ASSOCIATED PRESS story:
Oh. It's the PC age. Melissa DeCordovoa, the sanctimonious social justice warrior told her Facebook fans that Yarrow was being canceled. Congrats, witches, the anonymous ones who were OFFENDED and clucked their hen-tongues about Yarrow got their wish. And hey, look at US, our story got picked up nationally!
Do you believe it? Just when you think it can't get worse than Al Franken hounded out of the Senate, or Kate Smith's statue demolished because the "God Bless America" lady is suddenly a "racist," Peter Yarrow gets haunted by a incident that has some idiots acting like he's another Roman Polanski.
In this finger-pointing witch-hunting idiot era we live in, something a guy did in 1970, for which he got a PRESIDENTIAL PARDON, is being held against him.
What DID he do? It wasn't what Polanski did. It wasn't what Woody allegedly did. At a time when groupies were a big new deal, and Lolita types were flaunting themselves and songs about being "sweet sixteen" or "just seventeen, you know what I mean" were all over, Yarrow got a little too forward with a pair of sisters who came knocking at his hotel door.
He was NOT a pedophile, NOT a predator. This took place at his hotel room and they came to him. Did the 14 year-old sister look 17 or even 18? Who knows. Did she go screaming into the night? No. Was this a major crime? NO.
If it happened in New York it would've been a class B MISDEMEANOR. In Washington D.C., it got him three months in jail, but years later, an official presidential pardon from Jimmy Carter. Why a presidential pardon? Perhaps because Carter didn't want this charge to remain a noose around Peter Yarrow's neck, brought up by spiteful, vindictive, witch-hunting paranoids. Did Yarrow apologize? Yes, over and over. And yes, it was with a girl young enough to have married Jerry Lee Lewis.
And now it returns, when he's 81, and touring a dozen other places in New York, Massachusetts and Maine, and his summer not only has the solo dates, but concerts with Stookey? A few nameless idiots complain and a meaningless cornball festival caves...and it becomes NATIONAL NEWS?
Isn't the point of JUSTICE that people who make a mistake pay for it and move on?
How many vendors at this hokey Arts & Crafts festival, with a few hundred gawkers singing along to folkies, have some kind of arrest record? How about the people ATTENDING?
Did Melissa DeCordova announce that there would be extra security on hand in case some 81 year-old man is taking upskirt images, or brushing up against a boy scout?
Yarrow? I have seen this nice, easy-going man spend time autographing CDs and records and meeting with people, including teenage girls, and being a perfect role model. He and "Paul" (Noel Stookey) have toured the world, singing the classic folk songs of tolerance and good will.
Stookey is a good Christian. He has written and performed solo material on Christian record labels. If HE can stand to work with Peter Yarrow, maybe the Colorectal Chenango Arts Festival needs to put a lid on their boiling hypocrisy.
Most of the people attending this festival weren't even BORN when Yarrow's unfortunate (and ONLY) incident took place. Now it's been dredged up as national news, to bring it all back home. The man has a 12 year-old granddaughter. He's been all over the world working tirelessly for charities and for good will.
Where is this festival, upstate New York or SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS?
It's in Upstate New York, where the hippies of Woodstock once danced around naked. And they were of all ages, and included entire families, and they were unashamed.
Yarrow was to appear at the free festival on September 7th and 8th, the main attraction on a list of nobodies:
Fred Eaglesmith and Tiff Ginn; Runa; Caravan of Thieves; Answer the Muse; Nate Gross and Americana Strings; the Real Time Dixieland Band; Bruce Beadle and Mike O’Connor; the Dovetones; Drumzzone; the Catskill Puppet Theater; juggler Steve Corning; Hilby the German Juggle Boy; guitarist George Anderson; the Meena Conant Singers; the PPD2 dance company; the Claddagh Ring Irish Dancers; and Martha Brower Ballroom Dancing.
The Colorectal Festival should have been GLAD to get Peter Yarrow and to KEEP HIM.
Hopefully the nearest to a famous name at this event, John Gorka, will pull out and tell this bunch of uptight ninnies to shove it. Hopefully NOBODY anybody's heard of will replace Yarrow. They will tell this bunch of suspicious Harper Valley harridans to look in the mirror if they want to see something abhorrent and potentially dangerous.
Take a look at this audience of LITTLE KIDS with their PARENTS.
Who were they listening to? You guessed it. PETER YARROW and his Christian friend NOEL STOOKEY...performing "This Land is Your Land" and "Puff the Magic Dragon" for FREE in 2010. I was there. These are my pictures.
Yes, the kiddies even CAME UP ON STAGE and clustered around Peter (that's Noel tuning up).
THIS is what you're worried about, Melissa? A nice old folkie singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" while dozens and dozens of kids happily sing along?
I watched him sign autographs after this performance and, no, he didn't grab any little girls and run away with them.
You think Bob Dylan would approve of this fake righteousness?
I think Phil Ochs would've written a scathing song about a small group of small-minded nasties like this Colorectal bunch of assholes. Christ, this is why Liberals are laughed at all over the country and why Trump is president. This overboard brand of politically correct sniveling and lunacy, taking JOY away from people at a summer folk festival, is beyond the wetness of the average melting snowflake.
This lamebrain festival nobody's ever heard of, full of arts and crafts and self-congratulating twits, should NOW have the notoriety for being low, pompous, and bigoted. It should be known as being even more intolerant than Trump.
Who in their right mind would fret over a Peter Yarrow incident from nearly 50 years ago?
One last thing. Peter Paul and Mary did not break up in 1970. Paul and Mary did not refuse to let Peter perform with them, nor did they hire security guards to make sure he never even glimpsed a child. They continued to love and respect him, and they even let him sing a rebuttal song that addressed the problem. They sure as hell didn't tell Jimmy Carter not to pardon him, or turn down requests for free concerts from charity events.
We live in a political world, Mr. Dylan sang. It is a world gone mad with fake morality.
Melissa DeCordova, YOU'VE GOT A LOTTA NERVE. Find yourself another country to be part of.
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