Oliver Anthony Will Not Be Wingnuts' Jizz-Drenched Sock Puppet, Thank You

To be fair, he's not real thrilled with liberals either

Conservatives spent a great deal of time and energy last week jizzing all over themselves about the latest Bearded Bard of the Working Class, Oliver Anthony, and his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which they perceived as having OWNED THE LIBS because he was talking about Washington, D.C. blah blah Democrat elites blah blah blah government investigating people for a few measly death threats at school board meetings blah blah blah blah woe is us we’re so persecuted blah blah blah blah BLAH.

The GOP went so far as to play part of the song at Wednesday night’s presidential debate in a desperate, clumsy, cynical effort to claim cultural ownership of it. And guess what? Oliver Anthony is not happy with them about it. Not happy enough to make a ten-minute video telling them in part to fuck all the way off:

"I wrote that song about those people," he said, referring to the candidates featured on the debate … It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news trying to identify with me like I’m one of them.”

He added that "For them to sit there and have to listen to that, that cracks me up."

Republicans Only Mad At 'Rich Men North Of Richmond' Insofar As They Help The Poor

This is all especially ironic because even before Wednesday night, the bloom had come slightly off of Anthony’s rose for conservatives after he made some comments in support of diversity. So by debate time, he had become a sort of reverse milkshake duck.

“I do hate to see that song being weaponized. I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own, and I see the left trying to discredit me, I guess in retaliation.”

Sorry dude, you write a song punching down on the obese and the poor and then throw in a nod to QAnon, you’re going to get criticism.

“That references a news article I read this summer that adolescent kids in Richmond are missing meals over the summer because their parents can’t afford to feed them and they’re not in school to eat cafeteria lunch. And meanwhile, I think like 30 or 40 percent of the food bought with welfare or EBT money is in a classification of snack food and soda. I think 10 percent spent on soda and I want to say like 20 or 30 percent spent on junk food. And that’s not the fault of those people.”

He says the above in a rant directed at the left for criticizing his lyrics about the obese and the poor, but buddy, the left generally agrees with this! People on the left are not the ones policing what the poor put in their grocery carts or advocating to cut school meal programs. We’ve been talking about food deserts forever! We’re with you on this one!

“It’s just saying that the government takes people who are needy and dependent, and makes them needy and dependent.”

Anthony doesn’t seem to know it, but he is in fact voicing a common, ancient right-wing complaint here about welfare queens and young bucks eating T-bone steaks and whatnot. That’s why the left got upset.

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As an antidote, may we recommend this interview with British folk singer Billy Bragg, who wrote a song responding to “Rich Men North of Richmond” in which he encourages people to join a union? There’s a great irony there, too, in that Oliver Anthony lives in Virginia, and Virginia has been a right-to-work state for 75 years. We’re so pro-right-to-work that conservative legislators in 2016 tried to get it enshrined in the state constitution. The effort failed, but so did liberal legislators’ efforts a few years later to completely repeal the right-to-work statute.

Not a lot of opportunities in Virginia for the significant working-class solidarity Anthony yearns for, is what we’re saying.

We don’t want to be too harsh with Anthony, who seems like a decent guy trying to figure a few things out. The conservatives who tried to turn him into a right-wing ginger Woody Guthrie, on the other hand? LOL, you hare-brained weirdos.

[The Messenger / YouTube / Slate]