It's almost too easy to make fun of Toby Keith. Still, I wish we'd gotten more of that interview clip with Glen Beck because it seemed as if Keith were arguing that America hadn't progressed as far with "racial issues" as Beck wanted to say, and that his stupid with the Obama moment actually came while he was making a larger, correct argument that an Obama-nomination/possible win doesn't mean that America's race problems have disappeared with the morning fog.
Blumenthal gives the game away when he goes off on a rant about how much mainstream Nashville country music sucks, and how only ignorant red-state rubes listen to it. I'm not a fan of the stuff myself -- the country section of my CD shelf has Hank Williams & Wilco, and no Toby Keith -- but I can see political and class and culture-based resentment when I see it. That's what Blumenthal hates: people who shop at Wal-Mart and listen to Toby Keith. He probably thinks they're all itchin for a lynching, too. It has nothing to do with the lyrics of that song (and Zengerle's right, if Willie sang it, it ain't racist -- plus, the narrator in a Willie song isn't necessarily a sympathetic character).
Toby Keith doesn't take himself as seriously as some on the left seem to. See, for example, his self-deprecating video for "As Good as I Once Was".
The trashing of country music generally is misguided snobbery. As with all genres, it has its share of forgettable stuff, but there's some quality country music today too. And the genre has the virtue of intelligibly-sung lyrics.
Country's not my favorite genre, but when I head to out far enough west on I-80 I give a listen to the PA station Cat Country.
Here's a good intro to quality country for the uninitiated, Gary Allan covering an alt-rock song by Vertical Horizon: "Best I Ever Had". Allan's had some hardship in his life, particularly his wife's suicide, and you can hear his sadness in his singing of this song.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Or, as Keith himself puts it in the Post-Gazette article Zengerle links to:
"I don't think anyone should listen to what stupid celebrities say."
It's almost too easy to make fun of Toby Keith. Still, I wish we'd gotten more of that interview clip with Glen Beck because it seemed as if Keith were arguing that America hadn't progressed as far with "racial issues" as Beck wanted to say, and that his stupid with the Obama moment actually came while he was making a larger, correct argument that an Obama-nomination/possible win doesn't mean that America's race problems have disappeared with the morning fog.
Blumenthal gives the game away when he goes off on a rant about how much mainstream Nashville country music sucks, and how only ignorant red-state rubes listen to it. I'm not a fan of the stuff myself -- the country section of my CD shelf has Hank Williams & Wilco, and no Toby Keith -- but I can see political and class and culture-based resentment when I see it. That's what Blumenthal hates: people who shop at Wal-Mart and listen to Toby Keith. He probably thinks they're all itchin for a lynching, too. It has nothing to do with the lyrics of that song (and Zengerle's right, if Willie sang it, it ain't racist -- plus, the narrator in a Willie song isn't necessarily a sympathetic character).
Toby Keith doesn't take himself as seriously as some on the left seem to. See, for example, his self-deprecating video for "As Good as I Once Was".
The trashing of country music generally is misguided snobbery. As with all genres, it has its share of forgettable stuff, but there's some quality country music today too. And the genre has the virtue of intelligibly-sung lyrics.
Country's not my favorite genre, but when I head to out far enough west on I-80 I give a listen to the PA station Cat Country.
Here's a good intro to quality country for the uninitiated, Gary Allan covering an alt-rock song by Vertical Horizon: "Best I Ever Had". Allan's had some hardship in his life, particularly his wife's suicide, and you can hear his sadness in his singing of this song.