Small Town Spin

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

By the time you read this, it’s possible that a country singer will have released a song about the evils of the banking industry. In the accompanying video, there may be a man in a yarmulke gleefully counting money in a boardroom, while mothers and their babies huddle in the cold outside by a makeshift fire. Said artist will be accused of anti-Semitism, a charge at which he will take great offense, countering how he was just talking about the plight of the poor in America and how he’s offended and hurt that people think he’s anti-Semitic, especially since his aunt married a Jew whom he always liked. The artist’s wife, his second, sitting by his side, fighting back tears, will opine about the disappearing America she remembers as a girl growing up in [insert small town in a Southern state in which she was raised], as she reassuringly rubs his back during the press conference.

“We don’t have a racist bone in our bodies,” she will say. “Nope, not one.”

The song will go to the top of the charts, GOP presidential candidates will come to his defense and decry his “cancellation” by the woke mob, and well-meaning columnists will opine that while the song is an abomination, a discussion of the wealth gap is not.

I saw a photo of Lee Greenwood on Facebook a few days after Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” was released. Greenwood, if you remember, wrote “God Bless the USA,” a song that owed so much to “God Bless America” that the estate of Irving Berlin should have sued for  theft.

God Bless America
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home

God Bless the USA
From the lakes of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee
Across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea
From Detroit down to Houston and New York to LA
Well, there’s pride in every American heart

That plagiarism sh*t may fly in a small town — good luck.Try that in a big city.

In the post, a photo of Greenwood, along with his wife, Kimberly, his fourth, was of them sharing an ice cream cone outside a Dairy Queen in Virginia. He posted, “Truly enjoy visiting small town USA!”

New Yorkers and Angelenos and Chicagoans could know such joy, too, he seems to be saying, if only they stood during the anthem and didn’t allow drag queens to read “Green Eggs and Ham” to the young’uns.

Artists like Aldean and Greenwood suck up to the heartland of America as if to say it is there — where the waving wheat sure smells sweet and sunsets make great concluding shots in music videos — and only there will you find patriotism, hard work, manners, and respect for the elderly. This is no doubt news to all the families from Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Boston (and those are just the B’s) who lost loved ones defending the country and work 12 hours a day to feed their families, as it will be to those in Philadelphia, Miami, and Chicago who wake up every morning and put up flags on their front porch, as it will be to those in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., who respect cops and give veterans their seats at airports, as it will be to those in Providence and Newark who watch NASCAR.

Remember this execrable line in “God Bless the USA”?  

“And I’m proud to be an American / Where at least I know I’m free.”

“At least”?

Would you like some Freedom Fries with that whine? 

In Aldean’s video, in which he indiscriminately promises vigilante justice against those smashing jewelry cases, flipping cops the bird, and merely standing on picket lines, there’s not one Black person raising the American flag, not one Asian looking into the sunset, not one Latino on a tractor.

But of course he’s not racist.

“I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song,” Aldean responded after the video was released, adding, “these references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it — and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far.”

Does it?

“Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / Well, that sh*t might fly in the city, good luck,” he sings. “Try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won’t take long/For you to find out, I recommend you don’t

Try that in a small town

Lynching? Hell, I’ll shoot you myself.

As for his contention the video clips are from real news footage, true — but a clip of Dylann Roof didn’t make it into the video, nor did one of Timothy McVeigh, Derek Chauvin, George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, Adam Lanza, or James Fields, who rammed his car into Heather Heyer and killed her.

They’re all White.

Aldean, who was performing Las Vegas during the mass shooting at the Harvest Music Festival, said, after Stephen Craig Paddock shot 60 dead, that it was “too easy to get guns” in America.

Paddock didn’t make it into the video.

He was also White.

Black Lives Matters made the video.

“The feeling of a community,” Aldean said, explaining the lyrics in “Try That in a Small Town,” “that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief.”

But if he thinks the differences are too great, or if he thinks you crossed the line, well, remember, he’s got Grandpa’s gun.

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman” has just been released. In addition, he is the author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2023

Populist.com