Monday, CMT yanked the video for country music singer Jason Aldean’s gross new single, “Try That in a Small Town,” after a few days of collective open-mouthed horror at the offensive images and message.
Aldean’s label, Broken Bow Records/BMG, released the video Friday and it was in rotation on CMT through Sunday, presumably until someone actually watched it.
The video was almost comically offensive. Aldean appears in front of a Tennessee courthouse with the flag behind him. It is the US flag, not the Confederate, so that’s something at least. However, according to Ashton Pittman at the Mississippi Free Press, this is also the site “where a white lynch mob strung Henry Choate up at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, after dragging his body through the streets with a car in 1927. That's where Aldean chose to sing about murdering people who don't respect police.”
It’s arguably worse that this probably wasn’t intentional. It just reinforces that Tennessee’s racist history is truly inescapable, even when conjuring up “good old days” that were more brutal than good.
The video features footage of burning flags and angry protesters, some of whom are attacking the police, which Fox News insists happened around the clock during the summer of 2020. We see someone robbing a convenience store. This is the video Travis Bickle would make today and post on YouTube.
Then there are what I generously describe as the song’s lyrics. They begin, “Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk/Carjack an old lady at a red light/Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store/Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like.”
I lived in New York City for 15 years and I didn’t meet anyone who thought petty crime and old lady terrorism was “cool.” I swear it seems as if right-wingers have dystopian fantasies about people and places they don’t actually know. Aldean is from Macon, Georgia, and lives in Nashville. What’s his problem?
He continues, “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face/Stomp on the flag and light it up/
Yeah, ya think you're tough.”
Now he’s moved on to what truly offends him — free expression and defiance of (white male) authority, and here’s where he goes full Birth of a Nation: “Well, try that in a small town/See how far ya make it down the road/Around here, we take care of our own/You cross that line, it won't take long/For you to find out, I recommend you don’t try that in a small town.”
For all his previous concern about disrespecting cops, there’s no actual mention in this last verse of the criminal justice system — you know, the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. “See how far ya make it down the road” and “it won’t take long” would suggest a speedy (lack of) trial at the end of a rope.
Yeah, it’s 2023 and this guy is dropping a pro-lynching anthem.
He’s also predictably touchy about his masculinity stand-in: “Got a gun that my granddad gave me/They say one day they're gonna round up/Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck.”
Did his grandfather bequeath him an AR-15? Because no one’s trying to “round up” those country rifles Jed Clampett used to find “bubbling crude.” Also, who does he think the government will send to confiscate his guns — Friends of Trees? No, it’ll be the cops, whom he’s overtly threatening with noose “justice.”
When the video launched, Aldean said, "When u grow up in a small town, it's that unspoken rule of ‘we all have each other's backs and we look out for each other.’ It feels like somewhere along the way, that sense of community and respect has gotten lost. Deep down we are all ready to get back to that. I hope my new music video helps y'all know that u are not alone in feeling that way."
Vigilante mobs taking the law into their own hands don’t promote a sense of community for me, but I guess I’m too “woke.” (It’s still not advisable for Black folks to sleep too soundly late at night in some parts of the South.)
“Try That In A Small Town” and its accompanying video weren’t well received, and not just because they both sucked.
Gun safety advocate Shannon Watts pointed out that Aldean was on stage at the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival in 2017 when a gunman fired into the crowd, killing 60 people and injuring 413. The gunman did far more than rob a convenience store or burn a flag, yet rampant gun violence is not what Aldean decries in his song.
Nashville resident and actual musician Sheryl Crow tweeted Tuesday, “I’m from a small town. Even people in small towns are sick of violence. There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence. You should know that better than anyone having survived a mass shooting. This is not American or small town-like. It’s just lame.”
Maintaining her spotless record of always being wrong about everything, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee defended Aldean and claimed he’d been “cancel cultured,” which is right-wing speak for “public criticism of a public work.” These are the same people who bullied Dylan Mulvaney because she drank Bud Light while trans.
Aldean didn’t offer anything so prosaic as an apology for offending people. Instead, he presented himself as the true victim. It’s the same tactic he used when he was called out for wearing Blackface at a Halloween party.
He whined on social media Tuesday, “In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.”
Sir, if none of your footage of supposed riots and attacks on the police includes the January 6 Capitol attack, your agenda is fairly obvious.
“There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it,” he went on, “and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far. As so many pointed out, I was present at Route 91 — where so many lost their lives — and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy. NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.”
Aldean abruptly cancelled a performance Sunday in Hartford, Connecticut, after suffering heat exhaustion. (Connecticut has endured a recent heat wave.) I’m not bringing this up to gloat or anything, but rather point out that he wasn’t felled by rampant crime in a Democratic-run state but by climate change.
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"Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk"
Is he referring to that wonderful scene of Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched? Boy I really wish I could post the gif here.
Johnny Cougar aka John Cougar Mellencamp aka John Mellencamp managed to sing tribute to small towns without being a total dick. This is all code for uppity Black people IMOHO.