How do we determine the sum of an author’s life? Joan Didion wrote hauntingly lovely language that was everything the right has come to love about the departed. She was a harbinger of the” New Journalism”, which combined beautiful writing with a less-than-strict adherence to the facts. How should she be remembered?
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Pete Seeger spent “70 years traveling the country, picking up tunes, water huts, work music, crisis music, tunes of love, songs of war and peace, songs of injustice, and songs that were just plain fun”, I wrote after Seeger died in 2014. Seeger worked tirelessly to protect this valuable Americana legacy while remaining in close proximity to obscurity at times. It was a remarkable accomplishment that was unmatched by anything the Smithsonian has previously accomplished.  ,
Weaver was a dyed-in-the-wool, dramatic Communist who loved Stalin. How should he be remembered?
At the age of 88, Kris Kristofferson passed away on Saturday. Kristofferson’s cross-over charm led to a film career that included the large box office and social hit” A Star is Born” with another progressive icon, Barbara Streisand. He also acted in clunkers like” Millennium” with design Charyl Ladd. The idea of future individuals removing failed aircraft from the sky before they crashed was a little too many for people to recognize.
However, Kristofferson may remain a country music star and one of the 20th century’s most prosperous artists. Janis Joplin, Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Roger Miller, Ray Stevens, Bobby Bare, and two hundred different recording artists covered his music.  ,
Kristofferson was a dissident. He “was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Golden Gloves Boxer, a forest fire, and an Army Ranger who flew aircraft and turned down a chance to train at West Point”, according to National Review. Like Seeger, he even admired Communists.
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In 1979, he played the second Cuban-American stone event, in Havana. The great level for the hand-picked crowd of government acolytes came when he dedicated a track to Fidel Castro, praising him, Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata, and Christ as excellent revolutionaries.
Later, he fell under the spell of the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. The only color on his all-black outfit was a small red button with the image of Augusto César Sandino, the patron saint of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution, according to a Washington Post profile in 1987.
Additionally, Kristofferson eloquently addressed Sandinista-trained leader Daniel Ortega.
Sandinista, you can hold your head up high
You have given back their Freedom
You have lived up to the persona you deserve.
Sandinista, may your spirit never die
Hold the candle to the darkness
You’re the keeper of the flame.
Ick.
The album that terrible song was released was bombed. One critic called Kristofferson’s effort” simplistic and heavy-handed, a perfect example of politics overwhelming art”.
And that’s the problem sometimes with brilliant artists. They become so enamored of their own talent that they think it applies to every other aspect of their existence. Kristallson never quite got around to admit that he was a “useful idiot.”
Kristofferson never made a public comment about the fall of the Berlin Wall, but he occasionally responded back with as much as he could. In an interview with Variety’s Chris Willman in the 2000s, he said,” I saw some book the other day called’ Shut Up and Sing’ ( by conservative Fox host Laura Ingraham ), and my only feeling was: I am singing, dammit— shut up and listen”!
However, Kristofferson pleaded the passage of time when an actor raised the issue of communism’s collapse, claiming that the collapse was in the past and there were other things to talk about.
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Leftists like Kristofferson were constantly haught over being on the “right side of history.” Indeed, when it came to civil rights, the Vietnam War, and many aspects of environmental activism, the left led the way.
However, they were mistaken about Communism then and now. Not recognizing that it ruins their legacy
When evaluating a man’s life, it is important to consider both his talent and the cultural impact of the artist on the world around him. When the time comes to evaluate him, remove the facade layer by layer and evaluate him for his incredible complexity and contradiction. Please do n’t take the one-dimensional route and call him a failure based solely on his political beliefs.