Small Town Values?

The Jason Aldean shit got stuck in my craw again today, and I was going to write something long and critical about how he DIDN’T grow up in a small town. He grew up in a majority Black city, Macon, Georgia, but CHOSE to attend a Christian school where the student body is STILL over 90% white in 2023. I was gonna write about how the town where he filmed his video, Columbia, Tennessee, is no longer a small town, but it WAS one in 1927 when Henry Choate was tied to the back of a car and dragged through the streets of that small town before being hanged right where Aldean CHOSE to stage his video.

I was gonna write about how the whole point of Sundown Towns across America was never having to SAY the words, “Get out by dark, N*****,” because that shit is IMPLIED by the militancy of statements like, “We protect our own round here,” when “our own,” are all fish-belly white and hair-trigger angry about them “outsiders from the city coming 'round here to do no good."

Just ask Ahmaud Arbery's people about that.

Ugh....

But I’m not gonna write about Jason Aldean anymore. He’s not worth it, and neither are his fans.

Look, if you’re self-delusional enough to believe there’s nothing wrong with that song, if you’re so goddamn lost that you can’t parse your bullshit from the barbaric history of THIS nation, THAT courthouse, and that belligerent, “gonna-shoot-you-with-my-granddaddy’s-gun” attitude of burly, silly, eternally adolescent white men, then you’re just not worth a minute more of my time.

(Though, for the sake of our mutual language, please stop publicly confusing the word “censorship” with “criticism.” Even if you’re Jason-Aldean-level dumb, you can at least figure that much out with little effort, right?)

At least, I hope to god you can.

So, instead of writing another word about that idiot, I’m gonna turn back the clock to a true American hero and a first-rate songwriter in anyone’s book — a man who really was born in the small town of Seymour, Indiana, in 1951. So follow the link in the first comment to hear a beautiful tune by one of my faves about life in small town America, and be amazed how it doesn’t reference murder or lynching even once.

Just love.

Which I send out to all y'all.