"Sure, not going to deny that. He was a random Appalachian guy a month ago, there’s probably weird shit there. But if you’re going to cancel every artist with a tenuous connection to a conspiracy theory or weird beliefs, you’re going to have to cancel a whole lot of artists that I don’t see you currently cancelling. You don’t get to be selectively outraged at just this one guy."
I got into listening to Hip-hop in the early-to-mid 90s, and the amount of conspiracy theorizing and more specifically, casual anti-Semitism of the Farrakhan variety was very surprising to me, and not just by fringe artists. Nas, Wu-Tang, Busta Rhymes, etc., all had bars that would easily find a perch on the fringe-iest of right wing websites in 2023. It's why I wasn't all that shocked when the Kanye West and Nick Cannon stuff popped off a while back, because there has ALWAYS been a vein of that stuff running through the culture if you were paying attention and not intentionally turning a blind eye.
I think most people underrate how weird and idiosyncratic belief systems are for most people. Most regular people are not cleanly left/right, but are a confusing mish-mash of left opinions, right opinions, normal stuff and bizarre conspiracies.
Totally. I think many culture warriors automatically assume that certain views fit together coherently just because that's the way that the political cookie has crumbled. It's not immediately obvious to me that a person's views on, say, abortion, should be predictive of their stance on gun control (and for many people I don't think they are), but for a certain kind of too-online partisan (on both sides) if you were given one or two of their stances on hot-button topics, I think you could reliably determine what their other political beliefs would be....and that's pretty weird, especially because one can look outside the American context and see how these issues fall differently in other countries.
Good article. The most off putting part was people trying to attribute racism/antisemitism/whatever -ism/-phobia gets you the most points among neurotic idiots who care to that song. It’s a cudgel of lazy people, and the majority of accusations are false or made in bad faith to suppress stuff progressives dislike.
However soulful and skillful it is, I just can’t enjoy that country twang. I kind of want to: I’d like to be open to music from different cultures, but god it grates.
Also, I found out I like queer-pop. But also-also, it makes no sense that that artist gets a free pass when the country-dude gets pilloried for a welfare-queen line. I mean, they’re actively trying to be as controversial as possible. I’m sure someone out there has a think-piece explaining why structural-something-or-other and neoliberalism makes it OK for them to say “c*nt” repeatedly.
It seemed as vapid and culture war heavy as most of the rest of country music; I'm not sure I'd agree that the "best" country artists are on the left, the ones I'd come closest to tolerating probably are but the most popular definitely seem to be on the right. Similarly it's unsurprising the singer was a massive racist. I'm not sure why online liberals were so fast to mock it. Maybe they wanted a new joke to meme about now that the jokes about Aldean have gotten overdone. I do kind of wonder why no one ever taught this singer how to trim a beard though, maybe he was going for an unwashed look
"Sure, not going to deny that. He was a random Appalachian guy a month ago, there’s probably weird shit there. But if you’re going to cancel every artist with a tenuous connection to a conspiracy theory or weird beliefs, you’re going to have to cancel a whole lot of artists that I don’t see you currently cancelling. You don’t get to be selectively outraged at just this one guy."
I got into listening to Hip-hop in the early-to-mid 90s, and the amount of conspiracy theorizing and more specifically, casual anti-Semitism of the Farrakhan variety was very surprising to me, and not just by fringe artists. Nas, Wu-Tang, Busta Rhymes, etc., all had bars that would easily find a perch on the fringe-iest of right wing websites in 2023. It's why I wasn't all that shocked when the Kanye West and Nick Cannon stuff popped off a while back, because there has ALWAYS been a vein of that stuff running through the culture if you were paying attention and not intentionally turning a blind eye.
I think most people underrate how weird and idiosyncratic belief systems are for most people. Most regular people are not cleanly left/right, but are a confusing mish-mash of left opinions, right opinions, normal stuff and bizarre conspiracies.
Totally. I think many culture warriors automatically assume that certain views fit together coherently just because that's the way that the political cookie has crumbled. It's not immediately obvious to me that a person's views on, say, abortion, should be predictive of their stance on gun control (and for many people I don't think they are), but for a certain kind of too-online partisan (on both sides) if you were given one or two of their stances on hot-button topics, I think you could reliably determine what their other political beliefs would be....and that's pretty weird, especially because one can look outside the American context and see how these issues fall differently in other countries.
Good article. The most off putting part was people trying to attribute racism/antisemitism/whatever -ism/-phobia gets you the most points among neurotic idiots who care to that song. It’s a cudgel of lazy people, and the majority of accusations are false or made in bad faith to suppress stuff progressives dislike.
More this, please.
However soulful and skillful it is, I just can’t enjoy that country twang. I kind of want to: I’d like to be open to music from different cultures, but god it grates.
Also, I found out I like queer-pop. But also-also, it makes no sense that that artist gets a free pass when the country-dude gets pilloried for a welfare-queen line. I mean, they’re actively trying to be as controversial as possible. I’m sure someone out there has a think-piece explaining why structural-something-or-other and neoliberalism makes it OK for them to say “c*nt” repeatedly.
It seemed as vapid and culture war heavy as most of the rest of country music; I'm not sure I'd agree that the "best" country artists are on the left, the ones I'd come closest to tolerating probably are but the most popular definitely seem to be on the right. Similarly it's unsurprising the singer was a massive racist. I'm not sure why online liberals were so fast to mock it. Maybe they wanted a new joke to meme about now that the jokes about Aldean have gotten overdone. I do kind of wonder why no one ever taught this singer how to trim a beard though, maybe he was going for an unwashed look