Someone Go Find Some Pearls for Max Blumenthal to Clutch.
It’s rare that I criticize a fellow lefty, but this article by Max Bluemnthal tagging Toby Keith as a lynching advocate is hysterical. And I don’t mean that in the “extremely funny” sense of the word.
Last week, I reported for the Huffington Post that country singer Toby Keith had performed a pro-lynching anthem on the Colbert Report, and would be playing the same song soon on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and a slew of nationally televised talk shows.
The lyrics of Keith’s song, “Beer For My Horses,” which I transcribed, could hardly be less explicit — “Hang ‘em high, for all the people to see.” In my piece, I also noted the racially tinged nature of the song’s video and the forthcoming movie that Keith’s song inspired.
I’m sure glad Max transcribed those lyrics, because it was really difficult to find them on line:
Well a man come on the 6 o’clock news
said somebody’s been shot
somebody’s been abused
somebody blew up a building
somebody stole a car
somebody got away
somebody didn’t get to far yeah
they didn’t get to farGrand pappy told my pappy back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he’d done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street
For all the people to seeThat
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we’ll sing a victory tune
And we’ll all meet back at the local saloon
And we’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing
whiskey for my man, beer for my horsesWe got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
too much corruption and crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send ‘em all to their maker and he’ll settle ‘em down
You can bet he’ll set ‘em downCause
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we’ll sing a victory tune
And we’ll all meet back at the local saloon
And we’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing
whiskey for my man, beer for my horses
whiskey for my men, beer for my horsesHe knew
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys,
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we’ll sing a victory tune
And we’ll all meet back at the local saloon
And we’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singin’ whiskey for my man, beer for my horses
Singing whiskey for my man, beer for my horses
Stupid lyrics? Yes. Insipid? Yes. To be taken seriously as the diatribe of a lynching advocate? Sure, but only if you believe that Stan Lee’s superheroes are an argument for vigilantism or (for perhaps a better example) you believe that Cary Underwood is actually recommending that jilted women trash their ex-boyfriend’s cars in “Before he Cheats”. I guess Clint Eastwood’s a lynching advocate too, since he was in a movie called “Hang ‘Em High”.
It’s always funny when someone who knows nothing about a given topic writes as if he’s an expert (no laughing from the peanut gallery), and Blumenthal’s statements about “the dignified tradition established by Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton” are quite simply hilarious. First of all, country music was LONG established when the earliest of these performers came along, and with the exception of Bill Monroe who early in his career included a black comedian who did “coon” and minstrel humor (I am currently searching for images and will update accordingly), which popular and unfortunately still acceptable at the time, neither Cash nor Parton have had all that much to do with “dignity”: they were nothing more or less than pop performers of their day. Yes, both have achieved elder statesman status NOW, but in his day Johnny Cash sang such dignified songs as “Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog” or “Boy Named Sue”, and Dolly Parton has employed her prodigious tits to market herself as much as Charo has.
click for a larger view
Or how’s about one of the earliest country performers, Uncle Dave Macon. There’s some “dignified tradition” for you: in fact, it’s the same “dignified tradition” that inspired Bill Monroe.
As I wrote earlier, I think Toby Keith sucks, personally: I don’t care for his songs, which are probably better described as “jingles”, and his redneck anthem “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue”, written in response to the 9/11 attacks is idiotic at best. However, Keith is also a Democrat, and opposed to the war in Iraq. if Bluemnthal wants to single out a redneck country singer for opprobrium, he should look at Clint Black, who really IS execrable.
But jeez to call Toby Keith a “lynching advocate”? That’s just silly and ignorant.
One Response to “Someone Go Find Some Pearls for Max Blumenthal to Clutch.”
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August 9th, 2008 at 5:24 am
The only thing Toby Keith is lynching is our eardrums. I’ll be feeding beer to my horses when I see Bush and his cronies/puppetmasters swinging. Actually, given the odds of that ever happening, I’m still gonna feed beer to my horses because they, like I, need something cold and alcohol-laden to ease this eight-year nightmare.