In the footsteps of the greatest American Country Music performer ever–Johnny Cash–New Country mega-star Tim McGraw speaks out and identifies himself as a member of the only major political party that actually cares about improving the lives of average Americans! Time magazine reports in the Oct. 23 edition that the trillion-record-selling singer states that
“It’s innate in me to be a Democrat — a true Southern populist kind of Democrat. There’s not a lot of those anymore.”
“The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country. The chasm is getting larger between haves and have-nots, and that’s something we need to close down a little bit.”
Your man Dubh (author of this humble post) was born in Texas and raised on the Nez Perce Reservation in Central Idaho, so I experienced a whole lot of Country-Western music and its fans. Suffice to say that as a Texas-born ‘White’ American, my remaining, nagging, and unrealistic prejudice is against White Country Music Fans. And I speak as a true aficionado of the genre, having played and sung in the Classic Country-Western(CCW) Tribute band The NashVillains for several years. In our opinion, CCW’s glory era ended when Nashville started giving contracts to whoever spent the most time at the gym (about 1979, give or take 10 years). Steve Earle could’ve saved Nashville’s soul, but instead they decided that bigger $$ could be made by pandering to idiots with Mutt Lange studio gloss– Shania Twain’s records make Kraftwerk sound like an Edison wax cylinder. Future generations will ridicule her records more than Cher’s for abuse of Auto-Tune software. But I digress.
My terribly important and insightful point is that Tim McGraw’s statements should come as no surprise– we are a diverse Nation with diverse opinions– and it certainly is no shock that performers of this most American, populist genre of music(being a hearty stew of Celtic and African ingredients)would be concerned with the lives of the less fortunate among us and identify themselves as members of the Democratic party. At least those performers and fans that have actually lived or worked in rural America and seen what the Regressivist Clonebot Apocalyptophiliacs have done to rural America in general and family farms in particular.
Johnny Cash! Dixie Chicks! Now Time McGraw! To paraphrase the late, great Ernest Tubb, we’re drivin’ nails in the GOP’s coffin. YEE HAW!