I’m still not sure exactly what it is about country and western music that makes me want to puncture my own eardrums every time they’re assaulted by it. Perhaps one of the reasons is the boastful ignorance that some of its mascots, such as Hank Williams Jr., display in songs like “McCain – Palin Tradition”:
Here’s an interesting analysis of his lyrics by Chris Rasmussen at The Pitch, Kansas City.
The part I found most interesting, however, was the accusation that Bill Clinton was to blame for the current economic crisis. Now, just using some pretty straight forward reasoning, you’d wonder how anything that was put into policy eight years ago would be able to turn into such an economic snowball without George Bush and his cronies noticing. Yes, Dubyah did look pretty surprised when he made his announcement that there was suddenly a crisis and that there would need to be a bailout… but come on! That said, I haven’t yet heard of a President that didn’t make mistakes, so perhaps Hank’s hyperbole had some basis in reality? I liked this analysis, which seems pretty balanced. It recognizes some policy decisions made by Clinton that made the conditions for the crisis possible. But it also recognizes the abuse of those policies over the last 8 years that made these problems what they are today.
It’s a classic right wing argument, the same sort of argument that would blame school shootings on Marylin Manson albums. There’s no question that you can find dark and violent themes in Manson’s music (he would argue, of course, that this is simply a reflection of our violent age), but when do the parents, the schools, and various members of society that were involved in a misguided kid’s life start sharing some of the responsibility for how he was raised? Perhaps Manson himself put it best: “Raise your kids better or I’ll be raising them for you.”
Verdict? Williams’ lyrics are trite and have only a tiny foothold on reality, but we’ll likely be hearing them quoted by die-hard right wingers with the same fervor as they quote passages from the Old Testament for at least another couple of weeks.