A few days ago I saw Toby Keith on the Colbert Report. I had been cool to him since his feud with the Dixie Chicks in 2003, but didn't feel he was anything more than a rabid Republican blowhard trying to bolster support for the corrupt Bush regime by attacking its opponents. Now, instead of beating the drum for war and calling fellow musicians "traitors", he's advocating drunken lynch mobs and vigilante justice. Evidently, he has learned nothing in five years except for saying that Bush is a great guy would invite mockery. Instead, he's pandering to murderous racists and exhorting them to commit violent, illegal acts. Is this guy for real?
We have to set the stage. Toby Keith's behavior is not a recent phenomenon. He's been a creepy, self-righteous, arrogant thug for his entire career. His "feud" with Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003 was not an anomaly, an uncharacteristic flareup between temperamental artists who got riled up about a trivial issue. The enmity between Keith and Maines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/... ) was the natural and understandable reaction by Maines to defend her freedom of speech in the face of a malicious, brutal and vindictive smear campaign by Keith. The jerk didn't like a relatively mild criticism of Bush at a London concert, and then went totally ape-shit. He tried to link Maines with Osama bin Laden. I can't find the quote, but I recall his calling her a "traitor". (Fact check on this, anyone?) Then, he supported other screwballs who took up the "traitor" chant, burned Dixie Chicks recordings and got them banned from the air. The girls had done nothing wrong whatsoever, but their career was crippled. Only recently have they regained some of the popularity they once had. They used to be the top recording group in the country, but after Keith's attacks, they seemed doomed to oblivion.
It might have blown over more quickly if Maines had been more contrite and obsequiously kowtowed to the fascist overlords who equate dissent with treason. Sweet little Natalie, however, didn't take this lying down. She rightly saw this as an arrogant, brazen attempt to muzzle her. She responded to Keith's charges on their merits and called him out, but did not descend into an ad hominen attack as he did. The so-called feud was started when Keith refused to be accountable for his execrable behavior and escalated by insisting that Maines apologize for her statements. Maines got her back up and refused at first, even though she eventually did to some extent, but this failure to meekly submit to Keith's bullying enraged him and his slavish, know-nothing sycophants. Keith continued to carp, and the exchanges were soon characterized as a feud. In other words, when you respond to outrageous charges from a Republican crank, you are a "sorehead" and "testy". Natalie's freedom of speech had no standing, but we couldn't say a word about Toby's exercising his.
This "feud" was a one-sided load of crap, but no one has ever confronted Keith about that. Apparently, to Keith, equating someone with the top terrorist in the world and launching a slanderous attack on them is free speech and his God-given right. However, obliquely criticizing a war-mongering, criminal buffoon, who also happens to be the President of the United States of America, is a grievous crime that merits being stripped of one's citizenship and cast into exile, or if not expelled from their country, then jailed. (Jailed? And this would be after having been convicted of exactly which statute of federal law?) How has he been allowed to get away with this?
Country music fans and new media alike conveniently lost track of how this argument started. Keith could have said that he didn't agree with Maines and that it was improper to criticize the President while on foreign soil. If he had left it at that, there would have been no feud. No, he had to launch a campaign to destroy the career of the Dixie Chicks. Was he jealous that they were more popular than he will ever be?
Toby Keith is quite popular now, you know. To those of you who are not afflicted with redneck cultural indoctrination such that you realize that there are other valid forms of music expression than formulaic, simplistic country twanging, you should know that this guy is the darling of country music at the moment. Many of his songs have become anthems to the tub-thumping, two-stepping set. They love this guy, just as he "loves this bar". He can do no wrong in their eyes and is always spoken of with great affection, such that one gets the idea that he is a warm and wonderful human being. He's not.
When I heard that Keith was to appear on Colbert's show, I was hoping to see some evidence that the artist had tempered his public stance and would somehow back off from his odious character assassination of the Dixie Chicks five years ago. Previous to this, I had not seen any live interviews with Keith and had no idea what his personality was like.
It was truly disturbing. Keith tries to come on as an affable, even-tempered "good ole boy". He wore a denim jacket with the arms cut off, as does the comedian Larry, the Cable Guy. He affected the boorish practice of wearing a hat indoors, as well as a Willie-Nelson-style red bandanna under the white baseball cap. His sunglasses were perched on the brim of the cap. This is much as I would expect, but as Colbert talked with him, I became increasingly aware of an arrogant, self-possessed, patronizing air to the man. He called the host "son" as if he were superior to Colbert. (See the lyrics to Who's Your Daddy?) When Colbert asked him a question and got an unexpectedly frank answer, Keith retorted with, "You shouldn't ask a question where you don't already know the answer." The crowd, apparently well-stocked with the artist's fans, went wild. That was a mildly clever quip, but by no means great wit. Keith's tone was unmistakable, though. "I'm richer and more popular than you are, so I'm smarter than you, too!"
What an ass. If this is the way he talks to the host of a chat show, how does he talk to ordinary people? What would he say to a stranger who disagreed with his Neanderthal political and social views?
At first, I didn't make much of this interview because I had been watching it mostly to see if he would refer to his attacks on Maines in 2003. He did not, so I assumed that he wished to put it all behind him and get on with his career as a musician. It irked me that he has never apologized in any way or made the slightest concession to the idea that his actions were hurtful and unwarranted. I would have like to see that and maybe would have become something of a fan of his. His tunes are catchy and well-crafted.
That was before he performed a song that he wrote several years before. I've heard it performed in karaoke shows, but, as most people listening to popular music, never paid much attention to the lyrics. I'm guilty of only taking note of the chorus in most songs, especially those I'm indifferent to artistically. Seeing Keith perform his song on TV, though, compelled me to be a better listener.
I almost fell off the couch when I heard the lyrics for Whiskey For My Men, Beer For My Horses. I went scrambling to the computer to verify if those were the original lyrics or a special version for the Colbert Report appearance. Nope. There they were, word for word, except for an ad lib about "pot for my ponies" that he took from a Colbert quip during the interview.
I'm absolutely appalled at how far over the line this guy goes. The lyrics reveal Mr. Keith as a murderous, fascist vigilante who advocates drunken lynch mobs. Yes, he blithely asserts that citizens take the law into their own hands when they feel that someone's behavior is "wrong". No kidding. This guy openly advocates mob violence.
Grandpappy told my pappy
Back in my day, son
A man had to answer
For the wicked thing he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree
Round up all of them bad boys
And hang 'em high in the street
For all the people to see
OK. Let me get this straight. Lynch mobs are the solution to crime, right? I don't have to be black or from the South to have that idea make me recoil in horror. Worse yet, he suggests "frontier justice" might be appropriate for less-than-capital offenses, such as domestic violence, car theft and arson.
Well a man, come on
Somebody been shot
Somebody's been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole their car
Somebody got away
They didn't get too far
That's in the first verse, before the "hang 'em high" verse, so it really made me uneasy when Keith advocated a return to lynch mobs. You read it correctly. A stolen car makes you a "bad boy" who should be summarily put to death. Oh, but surely the talk of hanging was a historical reference to the Old West, not meant to countenance extra-legal punishment by self-appointed vigilantes now. I wanted to think that, but it's clear that old Toby thinks it would be perfectly fine for an angry mob to string up a suspected ne'er-do-well, then repair to a tavern to celebrate cold-blooded murder.
And justice is the one thing
You should always find
You gotta saddle up your boys
You gotta 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
We'll raises up our glasses
Against evil forces
Singing, ...
Alas, I had to reluctantly admit to myself that Keith is even more curmudgeonly than I am. Completely devoid of any sense of ethical morality, he blithely assumes that the most heinous acts of barbarism are acceptable behavior when he agrees with the motive. He doesn't envision the United States of America as a member of the civilized world. He still thinks of this nation as having the frontier culture of Lonesome Dove.
Is that bad enough for you? There's more, just in that one song. Keith regurgitates the fascist mime that there is more crime now than previously, so some sort of popular uprising is necessary to set things right. The part that makes me the most uneasy is his facile association of gangsters (i.e., organized crime), street crime (presumably, I suppose by foreigners and people of color) and corruption (by the Republican administration, perhaps?), and the notion that all should killed.
We got too many gangsters
...
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 them all to their Maker
I was confused by a seeming inconsistency. There is the lynch mob drinking alcohol after the murder, but then all the evil-doers are released from their mortal coil by "the long are of the law". Which is it? Do we have mobs stringing up those who, in their eyes, "need hanging", or do we marshal the forces of the law, you know, the police and courts, to administer justice in the form of capital punishment? Then, the most chilling thought of all made me shudder in disgust. Toby Keith thinks that alcohol-crazed bands of hooligans are the law! This his where his minimal education, and the subsequent absence of historical perspective, do him a great disservice. If he had even seen a movie about brown-shirted German thugs or black-shirted Italian fascisti running amok at the behest of their country's dictator, he might realize that vigilante action might not be that great an idea.
I'm cutting Toby Keith too much slack. He must know full well what he is advocating, and trying to rally support for a popular uprising of pin-headed, redneck peckerwoods should the "wrong" people come into power in the ensuing election. Why are gun sales up sharply in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and elsewhere in states of the Southern Confederacy? What are they afraid of? I think I know. I served with a lot of these good old boys in the Army. Several of them told me what they would do if a black man were ever elected President.
I didn't take alarm at the rednecks' assertions because such a possibility seemed so remote at the time. I doubted if I would ever see an African-American take office in my lifetime. We were focused on the Soviet Union and the threat of world Communism anyway, so why think about a black president? That was as unlikely as a woman taking the oath of office from the Chief Justice. My, how things change.
As much as I would like to see Toby Keith apologize for being a mean-spirited bully and recant his advocacy of mob violence, I'm more concerned with interdicting the culture of violence that so many people use as an excuse for antisocial behavior. The Dixie Chicks themselves postulated in Goodbye, Earl that murder was an acceptable remedy for spousal abuse. A currently popular country song has the singer brag, "I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights," feeling that vandalizing a man's automobile is justified by his "cheating on her". Oh, good grief. Haven't any of these slack-jawed, inbred, mentally defective hillbillies ever heard of divorce, restraining orders or dumping a lover who displeases you?
It should be easy to get the majority of people on board for making changes in this nation's political and social systems to promote the general welfare and improve the opinion of other nations toward us. It should be easy, but it's not. It's nearly impossible right now because there are enough people in this country who are so totally insane that they are ready to send our sons and daughters goose-stepping to their deaths to sustain corporate greed just because a power-mad demagogue tells us that we are "defending freedom". Another large segment of the population has been cowed and duped by corporate elitist warmongers for so long (since Reagan's 1980 campaign) that they are having trouble letting go of their delusions. To take the country back, by legal, Constitutional means I might add, we will have to change the mind set of the hoi polloi to renounce violence as a personal prerogative and embrace the notion of the social contract as the basis of human society.
If you think I'm talking shit here, then take a freshman course in sociology or even cultural anthropology, and reevaluate your position before you share with the rest of us the manner in which you would like to kill me. For those of you who can't wait to revile me and my views, please note that suggesting the visiting of violent acts upon my person will only prove my point, you drooling, brain-dead punk.
Let's have a little poll to see how many of you are rational human beings and how many of you are ready to go into battle with Toby Keith, swigging whiskey from the bottle, guns a-blazing. (Yee-ha!) I'm also wondering if there are 1960's-style radicals left who are still itching to man the barricades and to put the enemies of the people up against the wall.