When Lady Gaga was announced as the performer of this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, many of her fans were curious if the singer would get political during her 13-minute set. But it’s possible that Gaga actually managed to sneak in a fairly subversive political moment without most viewers noticing. 
 
 NFL senior VP of programming Mark Quenzel told Billboard of Gaga’s plans: “We have no discussions about her or with her that have to do with the election, or the president. What we say to every artist, very clearly, and they all buy in: the Super Bowl halftime is the biggest musical event of the year, and it’s also a communal event for fans, the Super Bowl itself. People get together as families, as friends. It’s a unifying day for people built around the biggest sporting event in the world.” 
 
 Gaga herself responded to that remark with this: “Well, I don’t know if I will succeed in unifying America. You’ll have to ask America when it’s over. But the only statements that I’ll be making during the halftime show are the ones that I’ve been consistently making throughout my career. … I believe in a passion for inclusion. I believe in the spirit of equality, and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness. So my performance will have both those philosophies.” 
 
 All that said, Gaga opened her set with “God Bless America“ and then immediately segued into Woody Guthrie’s Americana classic “This Land Is Your Land”—which, if you’ve ever heard the full version, is a little edgier than you might expect. It has also become an anthem for protestors fighting against Trump’s proposed immigration bans and border walls. The lyrics, in full, read: 
 
 This land is your land 
 
 This land is my land From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and Me. 
 
 As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway: I saw below me that golden valley: This land was made for you and me. 
 
 I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; And all around me a voice was sounding: This land was made for you and me. 
 
 When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: This land was made for you and me. 
 
 As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me. 
 
 In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me? 
 
 Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back This land was made for you and me. 
 
 According to Guthrie’s son, Arlo, Woody wrote the song in anger as a response to “God Bless America,” written by Irving Berlin, which Guthrie hated. We don’t often sing the latter, angrier verses of This Land in schools—nor did Gaga during the show. But as Arlo told The New Yorker in 2004: “He wanted me to know what he originally wrote, so it wouldn’t be forgotten.” The New Yorker further explains Guthrie’s political evolution: 
 
 Guthrie’s inchoate socialist leanings grew into a deep commitment to the labor movement and to the social and political adventurism of the American Communist Party. (Guthrie never joined the Party—his independence was such that he “was not affiliated with anything,” according to his sister Mary Jo; he did follow the Party line, however, down to belittling Roosevelt as a warmonger during the period of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, and he wrote a column called “Woody Sez,” in hillbilly dialect, for the C.P.U.S.A. organs People’s World and Daily Worker.) The first of Guthrie’s three wives, Mary, lamented his politicization as “his downfall as an entertainer,” and she had a point: the more he focussed on rousing the masses, the less he pleased the crowd. Guthrie’s modest popular following diminished; at the same time, through politics, he found his voice. 
 
 Gaga no doubt knew exactly what she was doing when she picked that song to open her performance—and though she may have left the edgier verses out, its inclusion still served as something of dog whistle to the protestors who have been singing it in the street over the past few weeks. 
 
 VIDEO: The Greatest Super Bowl Commercials of All-Time ||||| Tonight, Lady Gaga literally took a leap of faith (via some very trustworthy suspension cables) when she opened her Super Bowl halftime performance with a riff on patriotic classics. After her epic (and already memed) dive toward the stage, our Lady fearlessly sang her anthe, "Born This Way," resplendent in crystal eye makeup and a glittering ensemble. If ever there were a time for "Yas Gaga," this was it. 
 
 So I tweeted this: 
 
 And was almost immediately met with this: 
 
 I'm sorry — but did the trolls on Twitter miss the memo? 
 
 Clearly, many people watching didn't realize that the song "Born This Way" is designed for the LGBTQ community. If you've been to a Pride march in the past four years, you know a thing or two about dancing to "Born This Way" while you're surrounded by a ton of glitter, bare skin, and glorious, rainbow solidarity. Let's just be clear here, though: Performing a song that's so blatantly gay in front of an audience that includes Mike Pence, one of the most anti-LGBTQ politicians today , is absolutely political — especially when it contains lyrics like "No matter gay, straight, or bi, lesbian, transgender life." (P.S.: According to USA Today , that was "likely" be the first time the word "transgender" was said onstage at a Super Bowl.) 
 
 Furthermore, as our friends at The Hive pointed out, the Woody Guthrie song "This Land Is Your Land" is inherently activistic. Gaga omitted certain lyrics from the piece, which The Hive printed for your convenience. Here's a sampling: 
 
 As I went walking I saw a sign there / And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." / But on the other side it didn't say nothing, / That side was made for you and me. Nobody living can ever stop me, / As I go walking that freedom highway; / Nobody living can ever make me turn back / This land was made for you and me. 
 
 "This land was made for you and me," she sang, in the same weekend that Donald Trump's executive order — one that was designed to fulfill his campaign promise of banning Muslims from entering our country — was essentially (if temporarily) rendered moot by a judge in Washington state. 
 
 The Super Bowl is a massive display of capitalism, contracts, and fragile masculinity. We can only assume that Lady Gaga had to deal with these constraints as she planned her performance — especially following the accusations Beyoncé received last year for displaying black pride on a national stage. So in this case, rather than not show up at all, she allowed her art to be the activism. She played within the confines and outwitted them as best she could. It's up to us to read between the lines. 
 
 Related: The Black Panther Party, Explained by a Former Black Panther 
 
 Editor's Note: This piece was updated to insert lyrics from the Lady Gaga song mentioned. ||||| CLOSE Pete Seeger will be remembered as a folk music legend. The 94-year-old was known for penning "Turn, Turn Turn" and popularizing "This Land is Your Land", but there are lots of other fascinating facts many may not know about Seeger. VPC 
 
 Seeger popularized "This Land Is Your Land" and "We Shall Overcome" and wrote "If I Had a Hammer" and "Turn, Turn, Turn." He opposed McCarthyism, marched beside MLK and led environmental campaigns. 
 
 Pete Seeger performs in 2008 in a scene from the motion picture "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song." (Photo: Genius Products/The Weinstein Company) Story Highlights He adapted and popularized 'We Shall Overcome' 
 
 Continued to perform into his 90s. 
 
 Was once a member of the Communist Party. 
 
 To Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, the singer/songwriter/activist who died Monday at the age of 94, was "the father of American folk music." 
 
 But Seeger, who popularized This Land Is Your Land and We Shall Overcome and wrote If I Had a Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn, never liked the term folk music. 
 
 "It's been defined as the 'music of the peasants,' " Seeger told USA TODAY in a 2009 interview, "and then you get someone saying (of Seeger), 'he's no peasant!''' 
 
 Seeger, who dropped out of Harvard University in 1938 to ride a bicycle across the country, quoted his father, Charles Seeger, a musicologist: "My dad, the old professor, used to say, 'Never get into an argument about what's folk music and what isn't.' " 
 
 But whatever you called him, Seeger influenced scores of other singers, including Springsteen, Joan Baez, Dave Matthews, Rufus Wainwright, John Mellencamp and Arlo Guthrie. All performed in 2009 at Seeger's 90th birthday party at sold-out Madison Square Garden, a fundraiser for his favorite local cause: cleaning up New York's Hudson River. 
 
 RELATED: Recommended listening: Pete Seeger 
 
 That night, Springsteen introduced Seeger saying, "He's gonna look a lot like your granddad that wears flannel shirts and funny hats. He's gonna look like your granddad if your granddad can kick your ass. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country's illusions about itself." 
 
 PHOTOS: A look at the life of Pete Seeger 
 
 Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and Pete Seeger perform "This Land Is Your Land" at the Clearwater Concert: Creating the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders at Madison Square Garden on May 3, 2009. The concert honored Seeger on his 90th birthday. (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY) 
 
 On his facebook page Tuesday, Arlo Guthrie, who performed often with Seeger and is the son of Woody Guthrie (who taught Seeger how to jump freight trains), described his last phone call to Seeger's hospital bed Monday night. 
 
 "I simply wanted him to know that I loved him dearly, like a father in some ways, a mentor in others and just as a dear friend a lot of the time," Guthrie wrote. 
 
 "I let him know I was having trouble writing his obituary - as I'd been asked -- but it seemed just so silly and I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound trite or plain stupid....We laughed, we talked, and I took my leave about 9:30." 
 
 "'Arlo,'" Seeger said, "sounding just like the man I've known all of my life, 'I guess I'll see ya later.' I've always loved the rising and falling inflections in his voice. 
 
 " 'Pete,' I said. "I guess we will." 
 
 Guthrie fell asleep until about 3 a.m. when texts and phone calls began from friends saying, "Pete had passed away." 
 
 "Well, of course he passed away," Guthrie said in response. "But that doesn't mean he's gone." 
 
 Seeger opposed McCarthyism, marched beside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and led environmental campaigns. In 1969, he helped build a 10-foot sailing sloop called the Clearwater that continues to serve as a "floating classroom" and rallying point for cleaning up the Hudson. 
 
 "Songs won't save the planet," Seeger told his biographer David Dunaway, author of How Can I Keep From Singing? "But, then, neither will books or speeches. ... Songs are sneaky things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons." He liked to quote Plato: "Rulers should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung." 
 
 Seeger is the only singer in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who was convicted of contempt of Congress. In 1955, he refused to testify about his past membership in the Communist Party. (He later said he quit the party in 1949 and "should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to. ... I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin and had no idea how cruel a leader he was.") 
 
 In 1961, his conviction was overturned on appeal, but Seeger continued to be blacklisted by commercial TV networks until 1967. Even then, CBS censored parts of his anti-Vietnam War musical allegory, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, when he sang it on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. 
 
 CLOSE Pete Seeger - from a May 2009 interview with The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal 
 
 In 2006, Springsteen helped introduce Seeger to a new generation when he recorded We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an album of 13 songs popularized by Seeger, including John Henry and Shenandoah. Three years later, Springsteen persuaded Seeger to sing This Land Is Your Land with him at President Obama's inaugural concert in frigid temperatures on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 
 
 "He was so happy that day," Springsteen said later. "It was like, 'Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man.' It was so nice." 
 
 Much earlier, poet Carl Sandberg crowned Seeger "America's tuning fork." But when Bob Dylan called Seeger a saint, that was going too far. 
 
 "What a terrible thing to call someone," Seeger told USA TODAY on the eve of his 90th birthday. "I've made a lot of foolish mistakes over the years." 
 
 TIMELINE: Pete Seeger 1919 - 2014 
 
 But no one was better at leading sing-alongs. "There is no such thing as a wrong note," he liked to say when leading group renditions of songs like Amazing Grace, "just as long as you're singing along." 
 
 At the end of our interview in 2009, I mentioned that my father had attended one of Seeger's free outdoor concerts decades earlier. As my father told it, Seeger noticed my dad wasn't singing and urged him to join in. My father said he shot back, "It's a free country. If I don't want to sing, I don't have to." 
 
 When I told Seeger that story, he asked if my father was still alive. No, I said. 
 
 "That's too bad," Seeger replied, "because I have some new songs he might like." 
 
 Seeger was born in New York on May 3, 1919, to musical parents: His father was a Harvard-trained composer. His mother, Constance, was a concert violinist. 
 
 After dropping out of Harvard, Seeger met Woody Guthrie. They became part of the left-wing Almanac Singers who sang in opposition to the peacetime draft of 1940. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Seeger enlisted in the Army and trained as an airplane mechanic. He ended up being assigned to entertain the troops in the Pacific. When he was asked what he did in the war, he'd answer: "I strummed my banjo." 
 
 Seeger co-founded the Weavers, who had an apolitical hit, Good Night Irene, which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950, but within three years they were blacklisted from radio and TV because of their left-wing politics. 
 
 Long after the blacklists ended, Seeger continued protesting. In 2011, he joined a march in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests. 
 
 MORE : Seeger's impact on labor movement 
 
 For more than 60 years, he lived in Beacon, N.Y., with his wife, Toshi, in a cabin he mostly built himself on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River, 60 miles north of Manhattan. Toshi, whom he called "the brains of the family," died at 91 in 2013, after nearly 70 years of marriage. Seeger is suvived by a son, Daniel; two daughters, Mika Seeger and Tinya Seeger; six grandchildren; and a great-grandson. 
 
 If he didn't being want to be called a folk singer, what term did he prefer? 
 
 "How about river singer," he suggested. "I sing up and down the Hudson River." 
 
 The last time I saw Seeger perform was in 2010 at an environmental fundraiser in an old church in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. He looked as pleased to be singing with a local children's chorus, with kids named Destiny Burroughs and Maddy Murphy, as he had at Madison Square Garden with Springsteen, Baez and Mellencamp. 
 
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– Despite anticipation that Lady Gaga would make some kind of political statement during the Super Bowl halftime show, the pop star appeared to play nice, a performance of the LGBT-friendly "Born This Way" aside. Even prominent conservatives hailed her "apolitical" show, the Washington Post notes, with tweeted praise from the likes of Fox News, Marco Rubio, and even Ivanka Trump. But Vanity Fair reports that an "edgy political statement" may have been a "dog whistle" for President Trump protesters with Gaga's choice of opening songs, a double hit of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" followed by a portion of "This Land Is Your Land"—and the latter Woody Guthrie song is where Gaga's hidden message may lie. Guthrie's son Arlo has said his dad wrote "This Land" as a biting response to Berlin's patriotic song, and in the 1944 version the elder Guthrie recorded on his guitar—he owned one sporting a "This Machine Kills Fascists" sticker—the fourth verse contains some interesting (and timely Trump-tied lyrics) that have since fallen out of the versions we hear today. To wit: "There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me / The sign was painted, said 'Private Property' / But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing." Vanity Fair notes that Trump protesters have been crooning the song at rallies lately, and Arlo Guthrie and other singers like Bruce Springsteen keep the original lyrics in when they perform the song. In other words, Teen Vogue may have picked up on something major outlets missed. (Gaga made a big announcement after the Super Bowl.)