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April 10, 2013 at 2:28 pm
There’s another song on that album, “Southern Comfort Zone,” which he leaked last year that telegraphed what he was doing. But it wasn’t quite as over-the-top bad. You may have noticed I linked to a fan video made for “Accidental Racist” yesterday that shows exactly the problem with his thing, a reaction he did not anticipate from fans, that they would see it as affirmation to get out the confederate flag and Civil War symbology. It took 24 hours for his record company to block it. The person who did it unploaded another version and they blocked that, too, a tacit admission that this hasn’t turned out like the pre-publicity implied it would, an opportunity to say some daring things and get a discussion going. He’s become such a big star there was probably no one in the studio who could have told him ahead of time to ditch the idea, that he was definitely not up to the job of discussing race in a song in 2013. For people not familiar with modern country, a lot of its male stars regularly put southern rebel yee-hah neo-confederacy cues and symbols into their videos and music. So it’s hardly a surprise they sometimes come off offensively to those outside the southern tribe. Their audience, white and rural, likes that. They cheer, very loud. Since he lives in that bubble perhaps he viewed himself as a more eloquent moderate, the very image of a nice guy, someone who’d be one to step outside it and reach across the aisle by including LL Cool J, an artist whose work has never gotten into these things, either. When your record label goes from publicizing your tune on YouTube and tv to quashing copies of it in the same place in the space of a day you can tell they think he’s come a cropper on this. They’ll just want him to get out on his tour now and stay away from the subject. A lot of people, and not just from the south, deeply resent when someone is given a kicking in this manner because they say, with some merit, that the southern sentiment and heritage is more than this and that it’s just picking on hillbillies. However, that’s not what we’re dealing with these days. The southern thing has driven the country into a politically irreversible schism and the people most responsible are those who won’t, can’t and resent looking at themselves, instead getting involved in weird crap like this.
April 10, 2013 at 2:42 pm
“A lot of people, and not just from the south, deeply resent when someone is given a kicking in this manner because they say, with some merit, that the southern sentiment and heritage is more than this and that it’s just picking on hillbillies.”
Crap. AFAIC, the whole Southern “Gone with the Wind” “gracious living” myth is an attempt to legitimize slavery and the memories of slavery. The rest is window dressing, a post-Civil War made-up place that never existed.
The fact that my grandmother probably loved her aged ancestor, the man who signed John Brown’s death warrant at Harper’s Ferry, and that he was likely a fantastic family member, cannot erase his public actions.
And that’s what this myth is about: not facing up to that one’s ancestors did evil things and were wrong, wrong, wrong.
I realized this some years ago we visited Harper’s Ferry and went to the wax museum. When I told Second Son, who did his growing up in Delaware not 20 miles from Philly, that we were related to the person portrayed in that scene over there, he was ashamed.
I had seen through the lie of Jim Crow long before.
That’s when I started to see through the myth of gracious Southern living.
April 10, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Yes, I agree. But I regularly see the aggrieved rending of garments over scorning the culture. The guy who wrote the pop book on why we should let the south secede, sold over the Christmas holiday, generated a lot of it. I don’t believe there’s substance to it but there are journalists who took this opportunity to write that Brad Paisley was getting a raw deal. And it’s clear they’re uncomfortable being white and coming down on this, they still believe that somehow we can all just get along, or at least, should.
April 10, 2013 at 4:09 pm
Here’s what I meant, an example from the Village Voice, where many years ago I used to write a lot. Until everyone got fired and I was run off.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/04/brad_paisley_ll_cool_j_accidentally_racist.php
I have the exact opposite reaction and see nothing redeeming in it or “Southern Comfort Zone.” And if it’s a hit it will only be because the core audience bought it, or Limbaugh and Fox took up the publicity slack to pitch it to all of WhiteManistan as evidence of an evil liberal conspiracy to make everyone politically correct.
“[It’s] a daring declaration of the new American norm, one that will be sounded out in the precincts where that norm isn’t yet entirely accepted.”
April 10, 2013 at 4:09 pm
We can all just get along.
If white folks are willing to let go of their “holier than thou.” White folks are the problem.
April 10, 2013 at 4:29 pm
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/04/brad_paisley_ll_cool_j_accidentally_racist.php
Oh my. What a load of hooey. And patrronizing New York hipster hooey at that.
I have a paraphrase:
Now let’s band together and try to understand the poor wifebeater and how difficult his life is. How brave of his buddy to intimate that wifebeating might not be the optimal life choice.
Pah!
April 10, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Nicely turned! Bravo! That may come in handy.
April 10, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Thanks. Feel free.
The bullshit does get tiresome, does it not?