Country Boys

Am I the only one who saw some racist undertones in criticism of the Kanye West/Taylor Swift thing? I'm not trying to defend what Kanye did - it was pretty stupid and ill-considered - but the discussion of it on Hannity veered a little into good ol' boy territory when John Rich suggested Kanye was "lucky there weren't any country boys in the audience." Although Mickey Rourke sounded pretty reasonable, the ensuing discussion of a "19-year-old girl" - who, Rich added as if to further underline her purity, was clad in a WHITE dress - being victimized by a black man, seemed, given the venue, to be a bit of a throwback to Jim Crow-era proclamations of the need to "protect" white women from threatening black men...especially with the ominous reference to "country boys" waiting in the wings to deal with him physically if need be. I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into this. The American cable news cycle is so dominated these days by back-and-forth accusations of racism, I might just be imagining it. But it does seem a little peculiar that the outbursts of Kanye West and Serena Williams produced such widespread condemnation compared to that of Rep. Joe Wilson, who created a profitable career for himself as a right-wing folk hero after his own outburst towards the president.

Also, it's genuinely sad to see a musician like Rich, who penned perhaps the first great protest song of this Great Recession, align himself with the reactionary likes of Sean Hannity and the teabagging crowd. "Shuttin' Detroit Down" was a powerful anthem with lyrics that spoke directly to the pain of working class people being crushed by large, impersonal economic forces and mocked by the boundless greed of Wall Street tycoons still getting record bonuses. To see him help misdirect their anger at phantom enemies projected by the right-wing noise machine - ACORN, the poor, immigrants, minorities - is a vivid example of either cynical indifference to the real source of economic pain in America, or just the tragic self-deception inherent to right-wing populism.