This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1474406
Jason Aldean Song Triggered Renewed Attention On Racist Vigilante Justice And Small-Town Nationalism
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1474406
1 Like
“…while banning white officers of the old Confederacy from federal office.” Well, now there’s an idea.
24 Likes
This AM I was reading this piece from the AP
Sounded all nice and cuddly, until I got to this paragraph:
Two notable exceptions were Mark and Patricia McCloskey. The St. Louis couple who gained national attention for waving guns at racial injustice protesters were pardoned by Parson on July 30, 2021, just six weeks after Mark McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and Patricia McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment.
Remember these two?
23 Likes
Jason Aldean a racist? Just because he went to a “Xtian” segregation school and has only a high school diploma?
Yeah, he’s a f$cking troubadour of racism.
21 Likes
Sounds like that “Xtian” school he graduated from left out a few details in their teaching of local/state history.
16 Likes
The first (and maybe the only) time I heard the song was on Fox and Friends, when they had the singer on the set. These fasci . . ., er, Murdochs are relentless.
8 Likes
If anyone thinks this is bad now, just wait until the tipping point somewhere around 2045-2050, when the Census Bureau estimates Whites in this country will become a minority race, just under 50% of the population. The good 'ol boys like Aldean really aren’t ready for that.
12 Likes
No great loss.
I still say these are so close to AI generated country song lyrics. Just plug in 1970s culture war tropes of beloved good old boy stereotypes.
It’s just such a lie - you know who gets away with crime and doesn’t care a damn about old ladies crossing the street? Young boreds with small town money connections.
19 Likes
Rascist cosplaying country roaches hate the light.
15 Likes
“restore” the nation to “what it once was before all this bullshit started happening to us.”
“All this bullshit.” He means the Civil War. Just like that Hank Williams Jr. song:“If the South woulda won (we woulda had it made).” Hank Jr’s “we” is exactly the same as Aldean’s “us.” Straight-up unapologetic white supremacy.
Which has never stopped the Jason Aldeans and Hank Williams Juniors of the world from stealing black music. Just like Hank’s daddy did, but Hank Sr wasn’t a racist asshole about it.
20 Likes
It’s not just black people these guys hate, and it is not just the South. It is Protestantism that motivates their hatred, as it has done for 500 years.
How do we know? Because they are ready and happy to lynch absolutely everybody else.
11 Likes
“Try That in a Small Town.” Apparently whoever wrote this song thinks “small town” necessarily means “small town whose residents have ‘conservative’ values and are intolerant.” There are small towns around Cambridge, Austin, San Francisco, and Madison, to name a few. There are even small towns in Alabama, like the one where a local politician recently was “outed” for some kind of “irregular” sex and/or gender behavior and killed himself. Many people in the town said they didn’t approve of what the man had been accused of (I doubt that anyone asked them to approve of something that was none of their business), but they rejected the idea that the people who outed him had behaved properly.
23 Likes
Jason Aldean isn’t any kind of musician, and he can go fuck himself.
18 Likes
That’s what they’re trying to protect. They’re the local laird and master, that’s what they’re trying to “conserve.”
15 Likes
The movie (a great movie) In the Bedroom captures this class dynamic well. It’s set in a small town in Maine, so race doesn’t enter in. Though it’s not just class. The doctor whose son has been murdered by the son of a local economic bigwig doesn’t stand a chance against the bigwig.
8 Likes
Indeed, most of New England and most of New York state are rural and are filled with small towns. And I mean small: a few hundred to a few thousand people.
7 Likes
I’m not sure it can blamed on a particular religious sect. Most of these good 'ol Southern boys are Southern Baptist, or at least raised that way. However, there are many SB churches that are Black or other minorities. From Wiki:
In 2008, almost 20% were estimated to be majority African American, Asian, or Hispanic and Latino. The SBC had an estimated one million African American members.
I would blame the racial animus more on the hardwired “fear of the Other” tribalism that humans are wired for. Especially when living in a closed rural culture. It takes living and being raised in a more inclusive cultural environment to overcome that natural instinct.
9 Likes
I remember long hair on guys being a hot topic of debate. In 1962. Sheesh.
5 Likes