John McCain’s faltering presidential campaign keeps grasping desperately at straws. The former beauty queen from Wasilla is one; NASCAR and country music is another.
It amazes me just how the GOP scrapes for the support of the working classes it has so badly screwed over in the past eight years. And the McCain campaign and its party are trotting out just about every cliché they can think of.
Consider Sarah Palin’s showing at Richmond International Raceway this week. According to the adoring – and so typically out-to-lunch – editorial writers at the hapless Richmond Times-Dispatch, Palin:
“… drew a huge throng of enthusiastic red-state voters. Jerry Kilgore warmed up an already perspiring crowd by leading the Pledge of Allegiance and offering a prayer for the country — and for the safety and well-being of the Republican ticket. Not a moment too soon, some wags might respond.
Country-music legend Hank Williams Jr. crooned the national anthem with gusto, if not entirely on key. This was an all-American crowd. The gaping chasm between the audience and those covering the event was illuminated by the British reporter who leaned over to ask, “Who is that?”
“It’s Hank Williams Jr.” an editorial writer responded. “His son?” the Brit queried. “Well, he can’t sing.” The gentleman missed the point. Moments later, Williams launched into a revised version of his hit song “Family Tradition.” The first line? “The left-wing, liberal media are a real close-knit family.” The audience bellowed its approval.”
So let’s try to follow the logic: Palin equals redneck equals working class approval equals Hank Williams Jr. equals putting down the “left-wing liberal media” equals GOP victory in November.
My, how smug. But let’s take the cliché apart. For one thing, every working class, pickup truck driving, deer-hunting good ole boy an girl in ole Virginny does not mindlessly go for every iconic symbol the khaki pants and Navy blazer GOP crowd can come up with. Certainly not all country musicians fall into the Hank Williams Jr. mindlessness set.
Just after I read ther RTD’s editorial this morning, something I try to avoid normally, I was driving my car and heard bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley on the radio for Obama, noting that eight years of misery is enough. Stanley, for those of you who don’t know, is from the Dickenson County coalfields and has been a legend in Virginia bluegrass since the 1940s. Unlike Hank Williams Jr., who when sober merely grooves on his daddy’s aging karma, Stanley has some brains and serves on the local school board from time to time when he’s not on the road.
I can think of a few other country music stars who aren’t exactly in the Bush-McCain-Palin just-us-folks camp. They include the Dixie Chicks, obviously, and Steve Earle whose powerful lyrics can really light a political fire.
If you want a truly scathing attack on the financial mess and the Bushies who created it, take a listen to bluegrass mandolin star Del McCoury’s new CD “Moneyland.” It is dedicated to the working class who have been badly hurt by eight years of GOP mismanagement and, interestingly, contains a clip or two of an FDR fireside chat.
My favorite song on the CD is “Forty Acres and a Fool,” which decries the exact, same suburban sprawl policies that have so defined development-happy, GOP-led boards of supervisors in such places as Loudoun and Prince William Counties. In the song, a newly-rich market trader buys a house in the country. Some lyrics:
“He’s got a pretty trophy wife.
Set her up in a McMansion
But now he’s trying to wreck my life
He’s driving out in his new Hummer
I tell my kids don’t walk to school
Took out my mailbox, squashed a possum
Forty Acres and a fool.”
Now that it’s a song even EMR can sink his teeth into. You betcha!
Peter Galuszka
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