Thank you for this! Not for nothing, it was in a small town in East Tennessee that a friend’s son, visiting from the west coast, was viciously beaten and sexually assaulted while in custody. His “crime” was that he had disparaged Donald Trump while drinking and getting high with strangers around a campfire in the mountains. Jason Aldean lionizing that kind of violence is just abhorrent.
agreed. It might also matter his music has always been shit and the attitude he has continually professed have been shit throughout his career. And I detest his voice as well. But that might be coincidental to the aforementioned shittiness of his musical attitude that would lead me to dislike his voice as just as shitty as his attitude.
"There have been protests in Belfast, Maine. In Farmington, New Mexico. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In Bentonville, Arkansas. In Lubbock, Texas. In Idaho Falls, Idaho. The biggest anyone can remember in Paducah, Kentucky, in Bozeman, Montana, in Pendleton, Oregon, in Frisco, Texas, and in Ogden, Utah. In Tacoma, Washington, pastors knelt in the rain, pleading with God. In Bowling Green, Kentucky, three rolling days of protests. In Owatonna, Minnesota, a student-led protest lasted for 10 hours. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, thousands gathered on the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. In Myers Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Charlotte, North Carolina, where black people were prohibited from owning property for decades. And in Petal, Mississippi, where protesters have spent days calling for the resignation of Mayor Hal Marx, who tweeted last week that "If you can talk, you can breathe.'"
Noah, normally I find you a great read, but this time I think you contradicted yourself. Last week or thereabouts, you criticized Luke Combs for his White Dude Country cover of "Fast Car", Tracy Chapman's classic song about Black Innercity poverty and despair–but now, you say authenticity doesn't matter? Without taking away from everything else you said, I think it absolutely does matter that Jason Aldean is a wealthy, White city boy poseur who didn't even write this song!
Hypocrisy is the worst of sins, IMO, one the Right engages in on a constant basis, and has done so ever since Nixon was in the White House. But it's not remotely the same thing if performers and writers of color didn't experience slavery first-hand, any more than it is that a Jewish writer, teacher and activist saw photos of a lynching, which drove him to write the poem and later song "Strange Fruit" which Billie Holliday turned a hit song. Both of them were profoundly moved by witnessing a lynching, as would any human being with a moral center, I should hope.
I didn't criticize him for singing the song? I said that it was a problem that country wouldn't put that song on the air if it was sung by a Black woman. those are very different arguments!
I also said the meaning of the song is somewhat different depending on who's singing it. but that's very different than saying Combs was wrong to sing it. I don't think he was. i think it's fine for performers to be influenced by a wide range of other performers, and I think it's fine for singers to sing songs that aren't their own personal experience. I think it's wrong to be a racist piece of shit, which is where Aldean stumbles.
What if Aldean, not from a small town, sang a song about the virtues of small town antiracism? Would that be wrong? would it then be reasonable to attack him for lack of authenticity? no, of course not, because the problem is the racism, not the authenticity or lack thereof.
hypocrisy is very much not even close to the worst sin. In fact, our inability to see morality in terms other than hypocrisy is imo a huge problem. The main sin of the right is absolutely not hypocrisy. In most cases they aren't even really hypocritical. Aldean is sincerely a racist. but if he was insincere and were pushing racism—it would make absolutely no difference. the racism is the issue, not whether you believe in it. that's the case for most things. Racism is about the effect it has on others, and that's the important thing; centering the personal beliefs or authenticity of racists is just another way to center white people. It's not helpful.
Wow, you're fast! I quite literally just finished dictating my previous post into my iPhone. I felt I didn't give enough weight to WHY Jason Aldean being a wealthy, White city boy poseur is so bad, and was going to edit it as soon as I got my PC, because...You Try That on a Smartphone!
::Yes, I went there, and I'm not sorry.::
Bigotry is horrible no matter who it comes from, but coming from somebody who has lived in a city, even a "small" one like Macon, GA (pop. 153,095), it's especially odious because they've had much broader experiences than somebody who was born and raised in a small town. Not that there isn't plenty of bigotry in cities (my maternal Grandma lived in San Diego, CA, an extremely pluralistic small city in the middle of being taken over by the Los Angeles Metroplex, and went to her grave sounding like Archie Bunker's more racist big sister!), but even if you go to an all-White private school and live in a wealthy White neighborhood, you still encounter Persons of Color in your day-to-day life—something people living in small towns frequently don't unless those towns are attached to military bases, or they go to "the big city" for something.
I was born in a small town myself (Mom was from "the City", while Dad was White and Midwestern farming community)—and I am so grateful Dad joined the Army and got us the Hell out by the time I was five! The town I'm from has a bit under 5,000 people, half of whom I'm related to in some form or another, and their definition of "colored people" are the Italian family who opened a pizza parlor about sixty years ago, and the Korean wife of a cousin who are "newcomers", having only moved there in the Eighties after he got out of the Marines. Everybody else there is White and German or White and Scandinavian, and Lawrence Welk is a god to them....
Those people believe everything Fox News and Franklin Graham tells them because their frame of reference is insular and provincial, and the only time they see Black or Hispanic or Middle Eastern people are on television, usually either playing bad guys or loudmouth bosses telling the (almost invariably White) hero off. That City Slicker Jason Aldean is singing a song pretending he's one of the taught-to-be-scared and hateful small-town White people standing against the "Them" of "Comminists(sic.), Homos, and Negros" is like the bigoted rabble-rouser William Shatner played in Roger Corman's THE INTRUDER—the work of an outside Fascist agitator, whether he intended to be or not.
PS: The reason I consider hypocrisy the "worst" of sins is because the Right, who claim to be the party of Fiscal Responsibility, Business, and Christian Family Values are none of those things, but they use those to lure the people with no broader frame of reference into voting for them....
I mean, I just don't think it's true that people in cities are less likely to be bigoted, or are more culpable if they are. Bigotry is quite prevalent throughout American life...and part of how it's rationalized or justified is by claiming that rural people are more moral, somehow, or more innocent. So I don't think acquiescing in that view (that rural voters are less culpable) is the way to go.
Bigotry is prevalent throughout American society—I'm sorry if it sounded like I was saying it wasn't. What it is is much more subtle than "Try That in a Small Town", or the Canadian-Jewish Bill Shatner scenery-chewing as a cod-Southerner...and more pervasive.
As a middle-aged White man, I don't have to yell the "N" word at a Black kid when I can get a cop to shoot him by saying he "threatened" and aggressively shook his bag of candies at me—if I don't have a gun and shoot him myself, which is another similar matter involving just who the Second Amendment is for. For that matter, I don't have to yell homophobic slurs or hurl rocks if I refuse to do business with a bakery that does wedding cakes for gay people, or try to get gay teachers fired because I don't want "Them" teaching my kids.
I also didn't mean that small-town persons (or rural voters) are less culpable—I meant they are are bigger suckers because they consistently fall for the same line of shit Every Single Time, and vote against their own best interests. (They even voted for Donald Trump, a con man so transparent that he's been a walking punchline in New York City since the 1980s!) They have the ability to broaden their horizons—they can travel, they can watch other channels than Copaganda Broadcasting System, and they can go on the Internet to places other than Right Wing hate sites. They just choose not to...and then have the gall to call me "ignorant" and "easily-triggered" because I'm pro-gay rights, pro-Medicare for All, and think Ron DeSantis is a joke because he's so desperately trying to be Trump and faceplanting at every turn!
I really don't think we disagree on much here, other than whether or not calling Jason Aldean a City Slicker posing as a Country Boy is a valid criticism or not. I'd still love to hear Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman sing a "Fast Car" duet at CMAs....
Thank you for this! Not for nothing, it was in a small town in East Tennessee that a friend’s son, visiting from the west coast, was viciously beaten and sexually assaulted while in custody. His “crime” was that he had disparaged Donald Trump while drinking and getting high with strangers around a campfire in the mountains. Jason Aldean lionizing that kind of violence is just abhorrent.
That's really horrible. And yeah, apparently Aldean thinks that sort of thing is awesome.
agreed. It might also matter his music has always been shit and the attitude he has continually professed have been shit throughout his career. And I detest his voice as well. But that might be coincidental to the aforementioned shittiness of his musical attitude that would lead me to dislike his voice as just as shitty as his attitude.
he is not a musical genius, for sure.
Fantastic piece! Your central point is completely correct, and that's a nice collection of videos.
Responding with a couple links riffing on your point.
First, if you haven't seen it, the Key and Peele Country music skit is one of there best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRdkrDk0BQ0
Anne Helen Peterson's piece about Black Lives Matters protests in small towns: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/black-lives-matter-protests-near-me-small-towns
"There have been protests in Belfast, Maine. In Farmington, New Mexico. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In Bentonville, Arkansas. In Lubbock, Texas. In Idaho Falls, Idaho. The biggest anyone can remember in Paducah, Kentucky, in Bozeman, Montana, in Pendleton, Oregon, in Frisco, Texas, and in Ogden, Utah. In Tacoma, Washington, pastors knelt in the rain, pleading with God. In Bowling Green, Kentucky, three rolling days of protests. In Owatonna, Minnesota, a student-led protest lasted for 10 hours. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, thousands gathered on the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. In Myers Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Charlotte, North Carolina, where black people were prohibited from owning property for decades. And in Petal, Mississippi, where protesters have spent days calling for the resignation of Mayor Hal Marx, who tweeted last week that "If you can talk, you can breathe.'"
Noah, normally I find you a great read, but this time I think you contradicted yourself. Last week or thereabouts, you criticized Luke Combs for his White Dude Country cover of "Fast Car", Tracy Chapman's classic song about Black Innercity poverty and despair–but now, you say authenticity doesn't matter? Without taking away from everything else you said, I think it absolutely does matter that Jason Aldean is a wealthy, White city boy poseur who didn't even write this song!
Hypocrisy is the worst of sins, IMO, one the Right engages in on a constant basis, and has done so ever since Nixon was in the White House. But it's not remotely the same thing if performers and writers of color didn't experience slavery first-hand, any more than it is that a Jewish writer, teacher and activist saw photos of a lynching, which drove him to write the poem and later song "Strange Fruit" which Billie Holliday turned a hit song. Both of them were profoundly moved by witnessing a lynching, as would any human being with a moral center, I should hope.
I didn't criticize him for singing the song? I said that it was a problem that country wouldn't put that song on the air if it was sung by a Black woman. those are very different arguments!
I also said the meaning of the song is somewhat different depending on who's singing it. but that's very different than saying Combs was wrong to sing it. I don't think he was. i think it's fine for performers to be influenced by a wide range of other performers, and I think it's fine for singers to sing songs that aren't their own personal experience. I think it's wrong to be a racist piece of shit, which is where Aldean stumbles.
What if Aldean, not from a small town, sang a song about the virtues of small town antiracism? Would that be wrong? would it then be reasonable to attack him for lack of authenticity? no, of course not, because the problem is the racism, not the authenticity or lack thereof.
hypocrisy is very much not even close to the worst sin. In fact, our inability to see morality in terms other than hypocrisy is imo a huge problem. The main sin of the right is absolutely not hypocrisy. In most cases they aren't even really hypocritical. Aldean is sincerely a racist. but if he was insincere and were pushing racism—it would make absolutely no difference. the racism is the issue, not whether you believe in it. that's the case for most things. Racism is about the effect it has on others, and that's the important thing; centering the personal beliefs or authenticity of racists is just another way to center white people. It's not helpful.
Wow, you're fast! I quite literally just finished dictating my previous post into my iPhone. I felt I didn't give enough weight to WHY Jason Aldean being a wealthy, White city boy poseur is so bad, and was going to edit it as soon as I got my PC, because...You Try That on a Smartphone!
::Yes, I went there, and I'm not sorry.::
Bigotry is horrible no matter who it comes from, but coming from somebody who has lived in a city, even a "small" one like Macon, GA (pop. 153,095), it's especially odious because they've had much broader experiences than somebody who was born and raised in a small town. Not that there isn't plenty of bigotry in cities (my maternal Grandma lived in San Diego, CA, an extremely pluralistic small city in the middle of being taken over by the Los Angeles Metroplex, and went to her grave sounding like Archie Bunker's more racist big sister!), but even if you go to an all-White private school and live in a wealthy White neighborhood, you still encounter Persons of Color in your day-to-day life—something people living in small towns frequently don't unless those towns are attached to military bases, or they go to "the big city" for something.
I was born in a small town myself (Mom was from "the City", while Dad was White and Midwestern farming community)—and I am so grateful Dad joined the Army and got us the Hell out by the time I was five! The town I'm from has a bit under 5,000 people, half of whom I'm related to in some form or another, and their definition of "colored people" are the Italian family who opened a pizza parlor about sixty years ago, and the Korean wife of a cousin who are "newcomers", having only moved there in the Eighties after he got out of the Marines. Everybody else there is White and German or White and Scandinavian, and Lawrence Welk is a god to them....
Those people believe everything Fox News and Franklin Graham tells them because their frame of reference is insular and provincial, and the only time they see Black or Hispanic or Middle Eastern people are on television, usually either playing bad guys or loudmouth bosses telling the (almost invariably White) hero off. That City Slicker Jason Aldean is singing a song pretending he's one of the taught-to-be-scared and hateful small-town White people standing against the "Them" of "Comminists(sic.), Homos, and Negros" is like the bigoted rabble-rouser William Shatner played in Roger Corman's THE INTRUDER—the work of an outside Fascist agitator, whether he intended to be or not.
PS: The reason I consider hypocrisy the "worst" of sins is because the Right, who claim to be the party of Fiscal Responsibility, Business, and Christian Family Values are none of those things, but they use those to lure the people with no broader frame of reference into voting for them....
I mean, I just don't think it's true that people in cities are less likely to be bigoted, or are more culpable if they are. Bigotry is quite prevalent throughout American life...and part of how it's rationalized or justified is by claiming that rural people are more moral, somehow, or more innocent. So I don't think acquiescing in that view (that rural voters are less culpable) is the way to go.
Bigotry is prevalent throughout American society—I'm sorry if it sounded like I was saying it wasn't. What it is is much more subtle than "Try That in a Small Town", or the Canadian-Jewish Bill Shatner scenery-chewing as a cod-Southerner...and more pervasive.
As a middle-aged White man, I don't have to yell the "N" word at a Black kid when I can get a cop to shoot him by saying he "threatened" and aggressively shook his bag of candies at me—if I don't have a gun and shoot him myself, which is another similar matter involving just who the Second Amendment is for. For that matter, I don't have to yell homophobic slurs or hurl rocks if I refuse to do business with a bakery that does wedding cakes for gay people, or try to get gay teachers fired because I don't want "Them" teaching my kids.
I also didn't mean that small-town persons (or rural voters) are less culpable—I meant they are are bigger suckers because they consistently fall for the same line of shit Every Single Time, and vote against their own best interests. (They even voted for Donald Trump, a con man so transparent that he's been a walking punchline in New York City since the 1980s!) They have the ability to broaden their horizons—they can travel, they can watch other channels than Copaganda Broadcasting System, and they can go on the Internet to places other than Right Wing hate sites. They just choose not to...and then have the gall to call me "ignorant" and "easily-triggered" because I'm pro-gay rights, pro-Medicare for All, and think Ron DeSantis is a joke because he's so desperately trying to be Trump and faceplanting at every turn!
I really don't think we disagree on much here, other than whether or not calling Jason Aldean a City Slicker posing as a Country Boy is a valid criticism or not. I'd still love to hear Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman sing a "Fast Car" duet at CMAs....