I avoid doing topical stuff in these posts for a couple of reasons. First, topical humor is extremely hard. Second, just about everything one can do that’s “topical” or “current” these days is extremely polarizing and emotionally charged to a ridiculous degree. In case you haven’t noticed, part of the reason I do these dumb joke posts is to send y’all home with a laugh at the end of the week. Folks who read SJ tend to have a pretty gallows-level sense of humor, so I’m glad I get an opportunity to make you smile before you’re on your way to the weekend.

There are times, however, when a big ol’ bear just rears its head in view of your humble humorist. Sometimes, like today, those bears need a good poking.

Hand me a pointy stick and let’s get started.

Apparently country music is racist these days. Well, more so than usual. I mean we’re not talking about George Jones, David Allen Coe, The Cowboys from Hell or Hank III in this case. No, the offenders of which I speak are far more recent and insidious in the nature of their racisms.

I’m speaking of Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony.

Jason Aldean made some headlines last month when the video for his song “Try That In A Small Town” was released and then pulled so fast from CMT it probably made some heads spin. According to the terminally woke, Aldean’s song, and the accompanying video, are Racist with a capital, hard R.

What’s troublesome about the song? I have no idea. At face value, it’s a song glorifying the ideals and mentality of small town America. It warns the listener that if they try to do things like punch an old lady, spit in cop’s face, or riot in a small town, it won’t fly like it’s seemingly becoming accepted in big cities.

A quick search of Twitter—or is it X now? I have no idea—reveals several problematic areas with Aldean’s ballad. Some people find fault with the lyrics, claiming that the words are casting negative aspersions on Black Lives Matter protesters. Black Lives Matter isn’t mentioned once in the song. Others will tell you the song’s refrain of “try that in a small town” is a silent dogwhistle to the racism that’s allegedly prevalent in small town life.

To those people I say “Projecting, are we? Do better.”

The biggest complaint I’ve heard about the video is that the backdrop is a courthouse in Tennessee where a lynching took place. I have two issues with this.

First, it’s Jason Fucking Aldean. He’s not exactly a historian, and if you asked him what history was he’d probably say “A stupid subject for nerds.” I’d be willing to bet he saw the courthouse and thought it was a cool place to shoot a music video. It’s even more likely that Aldean had a location scout who found the courthouse and recommended to the country crooner he use that for the location of choice.

Second, and I hate to dig on my home state like this, but it’s Tennessee in the Civil War era we’re talking about. One of the more uncomfortable truths us Vols have to reckon with is lynchings took place in this state during the Civil War on the regular. I mean this was the state where the KKK was born. For some reason I have yet to understand, we’ve still got a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest in the state Capital building.

But don’t take my word for it. See the video yourself.

At the end of the day, my fault isn’t with the video or Aldean. It’s with the fact the song is the same recycled, generic, Bro Christian Southern Rock with a twang that turns me off of modern country music to begin with. There’s no soul to it, just the manufactured crap every other modern country artist churns out.

Now the next guy I want to talk about? He’s got some soul to him. Oliver Anthony in the last couple of weeks has gone from an obscure factory worker in Virginia who records videos of him playing music on his phone to one of the most talked about artists in the country based off a video of him singing in the woods next to a tree stand with his two dogs, a microphone, and a resonator guitar. Check it out.

A couple of observations here. First, this cat can SING. He’s got the “vibe,” as the kids say, of country music I like—that sort of primal howl against all that’s wrong in the world. He also has so much emotion in his lyrics that can’t be described other than the sound of a man who’s got one truth he wants to tell the world before he croaks.

This is authentic. It’s raw, real, and very much from the heart. I don’t know how anyone could get offended over this. But sadly, they did.

The fault I’ve heard lodged most with “Rich Men North of Richmond” is a lyric in the second verse where Anthony says “We got folks in the streets ain’t got nothing to eat while the obese are milking welfare. God if you’re five foot three and three hundred pounds taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.”

According to the scolds, this is “fatphobic” and “denigrates poor people.”

One problem here. If you’ve ever lived in a small southern town there’s a good chance you know two or three fat people who are most assuredly on welfare and “drawing a check” because they’ve had family members who passed down a tradition of mooching off the government to get money. There’s so many people in the South who do this it’s honestly amazing anyone who knows anything about small town Southern life even finds this line in Oliver Anthony’s song remotely controversial.

Honestly, to close this out, people are starting to find taking offense at every perceived slight so sexy it’s become way too commonplace. Art, even if it’s bad art, cannot exist in a world where it can be destroyed by one person shouting “I’m Offended” into the wind on social media. Unfortunately for us, that one person finding fault with everything has essentially become the caveman “art critic” from Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part One.” It’s that one asshole pissing all over everything the rest of us find beautiful.

And at the end of the day, when you’re pissing on something beautiful, it has the effect of making everything around you smell like urine.

Okay. I think that bear’s poked enough. I am sure there will be a few people who can’t wait to tell me how wrong I am about all of this. Just know you’re probably smelling like rank asparagus piss when you do it.

Happy Friday, everyone! Let’s have a great weekend and maybe, just maybe, I won’t poke any more bears next week!

Oh and if you’re one of those folks who thinks these songs are “racist”—muffin, do us all a favor and never listen to anything by David Allen Coe and the Cowboys From Hell.

You might blow a gasket in the process.