XPost: misc.survivalism, ca.politics   
   From: RightistsDumberThanDirt@invalid.net   
      
   They love Bush and are very backward people by the standards of the   
   Enlightenment. The Q might be, what is the correlation between country   
   music and political backwardness.   
      
   My first question for Dick might be: which country music? You could cite   
   Johnny Cash’s long-term commitment to Native American rights and stance   
   against the Vietnam War (he called himself “a dove with claws”) or the   
   song about interracial love that Merle Haggard wrote (but his record   
   company refused to release, though the minor country star Tony Booth had a   
   hit with “Irma Jackson” in 1970) or “I Believe the South Is Gonna Rise   
   Again,” boldly sung by Tanya Tucker in 1974:   
      
      
       Our neighbors in the big house called us redneck   
       ’Cause we lived in a poor share-croppers shack   
       The Jacksons down the road were poor like we were   
       But our skin was white and theirs was black   
      
       But I believe the south is gonna rise again   
       But not the way we thought it would back then   
       I mean everybody hand in hand . . .   
      
   Or you could just mention medium-sized country star Charley Pride (thirty-   
   six Billboard No. 1 country hits), who also doesn’t fit Dick’s redneck   
   designation because he is African American.   
   Here in The South, We Fuck Our Children Before We Let Our Cousins Sleep   
   With Them   
      
   In terms of political orientation, you could cite the Texas-based Dixie   
   Chicks, who refused to back down from criticizing Bush on the brink of the   
   current war. They were, as their recent hit had it, “Not Ready to Make   
   Nice.” Though corporate country stars like Toby Keith stampeded to support   
   the so-called war on terror, alt. country musicians like Steve Earle   
   charged just as hard in the opposite direction. Country music is a complex   
   beast, sometimes in resistance to or mockery of the mainstream and the   
   rural South, sometimes a mirror of or hymn to it, the product of many   
   voices over many eras, arisen from a culture that was never pure anything,   
   including white. (And its current listening territory includes much of the   
   English-speaking world.)   
      
   Another set of questions might be why Dick despises the people and places   
   that spawned the music, and what larger rifts his attitude reveals.   
   Answering them requires digging into the deep history of American music   
   and American race and class wars, and into the broad crises of   
   environmentalism in recent years.   
      
   Those wars about race and class are peculiarly evident in the stories we   
   tell about Elvis. I was raised on the tale that Elvis stole his music from   
   black people. The story told one way makes Elvis Presley a thief rather   
   than someone who bridged great divides by hybridizing musical traditions   
   and brought the lush energetic force of African-American music into white   
   ears and hearts and loins. It ignores his many white influences, from   
   bluesy Hank Williams to schmaltzy Perry Como, his genius in synthesizing   
   multiple American traditions into something unprecedented, and the raw   
   power of his own voice and vocal style. It ignores, too, the lack of an   
   apartheid regime in American roots music. White country blues and white   
   gospel were part of the rich river of sound that came out of the South   
   long before Presley. Despite segregation, black and white musicians   
   learned from each other and influenced each other. (Another view of Elvis,   
   from Billboard magazine in 1958, stated, “In one aspect of America’s   
   cultural life, integration has already taken place.”)   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)