"The short time line around [Oliver] Anthony’s virality and the seemingly synchronized way in which right-wing pundits, such as Matt Walsh and Jack Posobiec, have tweeted enthusiastically..."

"... and almost apocalyptically about 'Rich Men North of Richmond' have turned the singer into a messianic or conspiratorial figure. Depending on your politics, he is either a voice sent from Heaven to express the anger of the white working class, or he is a wholly constructed viral creation who has arrived to serve up resentment with a thick, folksy lacquering of Americana.... Whether this gambit will work or if Anthony is in on the trick is anyone’s guess. He has said that his political views are 'pretty dead center,' and he does seem to rail against both Republicans and Democrats, but, until his big break last week, his songs were mostly apolitical small-town anthems that sounded like they were written with a fountain pen dipped in Merle Haggard’s ashes.... I should say here that I am not immune to these charms. When I first heard Townes Van Zandt, I felt that some truth had been revealed about how life can break and drag, but in a glamorous way.... The markers of authenticity—the wood-panelled kitchen, the woman who alternates between cleaning dishes and smoking a cigarette, the grizzled Black man who, himself, also stands in for authenticity—could be pulled apart and declared problematic by any freshman in a critical-studies class. But they also work...."

Writes Jay Caspian Kang in "A Close Listen to 'Rich Men North of Richmond' The viral country song by Oliver Anthony has been embraced by right-wing pundits" (The New Yorker).

Read the lyrics here (at Genius). Here's the song:

"Let him sing me back home with a song I used to hear/Make my old memories come alive..."

"Take me away and turn back the years/Sing me back home before I die...."



Merle Haggard has died... on his 79th birthday.

Mr. Haggard was probably best known for his controversial hit “Okie From Muskogee,” a flippant broadside, released in 1969, that defended conservative heartland values against the hippie counterculture....

Yes, that's how a lot of people my age, including me, first knew him.

He later expressed ambivalence about the song’s message.... “I was dumb as a rock when I wrote ‘Okie From Muskogee,’ ” Mr. Haggard told the Americana music magazine No Depression in 2003. He added, “I sing with a different intention now.”

It's been a long time since we thought of Merle that way. Why, it was only 4 days ago that I embedded him — singing "Mama Tried" — on this blog, here.

ADDED: Merle Haggard, on meeting President Obama:

"It's really almost criminal what they do with our President. He's not conceited. He's very humble about being the President of the United States, especially in comparison to some presidents we've had who come across like they don't need anybody's help. I think he knows he's in over his head. Anybody with any sense who takes that job and thinks they can handle it must be an idiot."

"Trump famously suggested that we target the families of terrorists. Suppose we target them for shame instead of violence."

"[I]magine a fully-briefed President Trump talking about the losers in that terrorist’s family, by name. That’s world news. It would get back to them. Imagine Trump talking about how many cousins have inbred in that family. Imagine Trump humiliating the terrorist’s family in ways that only Trump can. Ordinary insults would have no impact. But the weapons-grade humiliation that Trump wields can definitely leave a mark. It might take some testing to find the most humiliating approach, but some form of persuasion would have a permanent impact on the family’s reputation, even coming from an enemy like Trump. He’s that good. (Or that evil, depending on your point of view.)"

Says Scott Adams, expatiating on the wonders of humiliation. He asks us to use our imagination, and for some reason, in this post, he doesn't talk about visualizing how the game progresses, the counter-moves and further responses. He stops at the point where you might find it amusing. Are you amused? Are you enthused?

AND: If families deserve shame for the actions of a member, how does that play out for all the mothers whose sons enter a life of crime? How mean to them do we want to be?

Bob Dylan says "I wasn’t dissing Merle, not the Merle I know. What I was talking about happened a long time ago, maybe in the late sixties."

"Merle had that song out called 'Fighting Side of Me' and I’d seen an interview with him where he was going on about hippies and Dylan and the counter culture, and it kind of stuck in my mind and hurt, lumping me in with everything he didn’t like. But of course times have changed and he’s changed too. If hippies were around today, he’d be on their side and he himself is part of the counter culture… so yeah, things change. I’ve toured with him and have the highest regard for him, his songs, his talent – I even wanted him to play fiddle on one of my records and his Jimmie Rodgers tribute album is one of my favorites that I never get tired of listening to. He’s also a bit of a philosopher. He’s serious and he’s funny. He’s a complete man and we’re friends these days. We have a lot in common. Back then, though, Buck and Merle were closely associated; two of a kind. They defined the Bakersfield sound. Buck reached out to me in those days, and lifted up my spirits when I was down, I mean really down – oppressed on all sides and down and that meant a lot, that Buck did that. I wasn’t dissing Merle at all, we were different people back then. Those were difficult times. It was more intense back then and things hit harder and hurt more."

Link.



"I read about some squirrely guy/Who claims, he just don't believe in fightin'/An' I wonder just how long/The rest of us can count on bein' free/They love our milk an' honey/But they preach about some other way of livin'/When they're runnin' down my country, hoss/They're walkin' on the fightin' side of me."

Bob Dylan says thanks.

At the MusiCares Person of the Year event:

He thanked people who had played a key role in his early career, ranging from talent scout John Hammond to music publisher Lou Levy, as well as artists who recorded his songs early on, such as Peter, Paul & Mary. “They took a song of mine that was buried,” he said, alluding to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” “They straightened it out. It’s not the way I would have recorded it (but they made it a smash).”

He also thanked the Byrds, the Turtles, and Sonny & Cher. “Their versions of my songs were like commercials,” he said. He also singled out the Staple Singers, Nina Simone, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and Joan Baez. (“She was the queen of folk music then, and she’s the queen of folk music now,” he said of Baez. “…I learned a lot from her.”)

Dylan says "Sonny & Cher," but if you look closely at that video, you'll see Cher is singing the "Sonny" voice too.

ADDED: More from Bob's speech here.  Don't miss the part about Tom T. Hall's song "I Love" being "a little over-cooked." As for what he said about Merle Haggard, well, Merle Haggard responds here: "Bob Dylan I've admired your songs since 1964. 'Don't Think Twice' Bob, Willie and I just recorded it on our new album."

"It's really almost criminal what they do with our President."

"There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he's doing certain things that he's not. It's just a big old political game that I don't want to be part of. There are people spending their lives putting him down. I'm sure some of it's true and some of it's not. I was very surprised to find the man very humble and he had a nice handshake. His wife was very cordial to the guests and especially me. They made a special effort to make me feel welcome. It was not at all the way the media described him to be."

Merle Haggard, on meeting President Obama.

"He's not conceited. He's very humble about being the President of the United States, especially in comparison to some presidents we've had who come across like they don't need anybody's help. I think he knows he's in over his head. Anybody with any sense who takes that job and thinks they can handle it must be an idiot."

I know. You focused on "he knows he's in over his head," didn't you?

"[T]he worst pop song designed to reflect a profound moral conscience. I.e. the smuggest, most pretentious pop song in history."

Andrew Sullivan sets up a poll for what he (a bit inaptly) calls the "Shut Up and Sing" award. You can't really shut up and sing. He's just looking for bad lyrics of a particular sort.

I only know 4 of the 10 songs on his list, and they don't really bother me. I mean, it's fun to knock Sting, but other than that, who cares what Madonna was actually saying in "American Life"? And if Stevie Wonder wants to sing with Paul McCartney about racial harmony using a piano keyboard metaphor, that's too sweet to get upset about. As for "Okie From Muskogee," that song has aged fabulously well. I was around in the 1960s when we hippies loved hating Merle Haggard for the things he said in that song, but it's nuts to take it the way we did back then:

"Okie From Muskogee," 1969's apparent political statement, was actually written as an abjectly humorous character portrait. Haggard called the song a "documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time."... "I wrote it when I recently got out of the joint. I knew what it was like to lose my freedom, and I was getting really mad at these protesters. They didn't know anything more about the war in Vietnam than I did. I thought how my dad, who was from Oklahoma, would have felt. I felt I knew how those boys fighting in Vietnam felt."

That text is from Wikipedia. "Abjectly humorous character portrait"? Somebody doesn't know the meaning of "abjectly." But I'm inclined to say that Andrew Sullivan is abjectly humorless... at least when it comes to marijuana....

"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee..."



Smug? Pretentious? Absurd!

You know what deserves to win the award Sullivan defines. It's damned obvious and it's not on the list. Imagine all the peeepull....

Really, this award is no fun if you take shots at lightweights like The Partridge Family and the New Kids on the Block — as Sullivan does. Get the guys who've been taken seriously, like Bob Dylan. ("He that gets hurt will be he who has stalled...") Pick a worthy target or... as they say... shut up.