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A post by Pat

Janet Napolitano pulled back that rightwing extremism report. She says it will be rewritten. I’m wondering if country music fans will be on the revised list of potential recruits for the looney Right. She might agree that there’s something a little too rural South tribal about some of those songs. A “we’re from the Real America and you’re not” attitude. That’s Washington Post staff writer Josh Freedom duLac’s implicit politcally-tinged condescending opinion of the Small Town U.S.A. genre. John Ratzenberger of Cheers fame is convinced there’s something downright dangerous about country music. He’s asking for a restraining order against his former girlfriend who allegedly threatened him with CW lyrics. He said his ex indicated that it is common in many country western songs for women to set the cars of their former boyfriends on fire. That statement insinuates that she may have the capacity to perpetuate this act or similar violent conduct.

The Small Town U.S.A. devotees say the genre is expressing a universal message. It isn’t my musical taste, but I agree with the characterization of the themes. They speak of a sense of community and appreciation for the simple core things that matter regardless of where you live. Isn’t the Progressive message also about community and a simpler life? So is the Small Town U.S.A. message universal? Not so says the WaPo critic. The music is a divisive “narrowcasting” to a specific community. A closing of ranks. We know what he really means because we know the big difference between the CW sentiments and the Progressive view. It’s those red state God-, country-, gun-loving white people and their reactionary ideas reflected in these songs that are unacceptable.

But then why is country western so popular everywhere? What’s that all about?

Twang Thang: Small-Town Songs Spur Big-Time Sales

“There’s always been artists doing songs like this, but it seems like there’s a real movement right now towards the small-town-down-home-type things,” Moore says in a telephone interview from Nashville, where he still lives. “People are really latching onto it.”

Says Meg Stevens, the WMZQ program director: “It’s a global theme: Wherever you’re from, that’s your place. You see what’s happening with the economy and what’s going on in the world, and people are getting in closer to their roots and their community, whether you’re from rural Virginia or downtown D.C.”

But the Atkins song and others of its ilk — from Jason Aldean’s “Hicktown” and Miranda Lambert’s “Famous in a Small Town” to Zac Brown Band’s “Chicken Fried” and Josh Turner’s “Way Down South” — are narrowcasting to a specific community: the core country audience, whose roots aren’t exactly in America’s urban centers.

…The symbolism and prideful sentiments of the songs are intended to create a sense of belonging among people with similar backgrounds and lifestyles, or at least people who romanticize life in the rural South. (It’s not a place; it’s a state of mind.) To some listeners, though, it might sound as if the artists are closing ranks.

“Some of these songs seem to fall into the ‘we’re from Real America, and you’re not’ camp,” says Peter Cooper, who covers country music for Nashville’s daily newspaper, the Tennessean. “Seems like being divisive while the industry around you crumbles is a poor decision.”

Atkins’s latest chart-topper, “It’s America,” is actually a more generalized celebration of nationalism via a checklist of all things Americana: a high school prom, a Springsteen song, a man on the moon, fireflies in June. But more typical of his fare is “About the South,” which is exactly that, and “In the Middle,” in which he sings of “a way of life worth fighting for.

…Not unlike hip-hop, in other words, a genre in which artists repeatedly reference where they’re from and with whom they’re aligned as a means to establish their bona fides and, especially, connect with their tribes.

…It’s like a political party: You have to understand and reach your base,” says Church, who grew up in Granite Falls, N.C., population 4,612. “The majority of our base is Middle America, so we try to do songs about what Middle America thinks and feels. Which I understand, because I’m from a small town and I grew up that way, too. God was important, hard work was important, family, honesty, patriotism were important. So you see those things in my music.”

Not unlike hip-hop? Did he really say identifying with tribes? Hip-hop has it’s critics too. There was a Congressional hearing about it a couple of years ago. We were lectured that violence toward women was a cultural thing that had to be understood. Like we’re being told about Islam now. Does misogyny have more universal appeal than Small Town U.S.A. values? What if that’s sadly true? We expect historical epochs to begin and end in a grand manner. Maybe not this time. If God and Country fall completely into disfavor and Liberty’s light grows dim, the last flickering ashes of the independent human spirit may be some two-timing s.o.b’s truck on fire somewhere in Arkansas.

(Title from song by Justin Moore, Small Town U.S.A.)