... The title was significant: All the News That's Fit to Sing, an allusion to the well-known slogan of The New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print." His style, from the moment that he starts playing, is incisive, sometimes cynical. At this time he had a lot in common with Tom Paxton who, expressing above all the right of the individual to be free, refused to be considered as the voice of any particular party or ideology. In the meantime, while individual and collective liberty are the objects of public mockery, he replies with his guitar. With a voice often passionately angry, he sets about all the windmills that the press and public opinion seem to have missed. What are the principal themes of his work at this time? No surprises: war and racism. At this time the escalation in Vietnam was just beginning, and in "Talking Vietnam" & he excels in describing humorously what is not in the slightest humorous. A young GI who has profited vastly from his training tells how "maneuvers" is the word that they have been taught to use-very useful when they get lost. He then meets Syngman Rhee, Madame Nhu ("the sweetheart of Dien Bien Phu"), and the ghost of President Diem. ...
