Call me a dumb bitch fucking commie liberal democrat hippie politically correct tree-hugging faggot but I think Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘That Ain’t My America’ sucks.
These are the kind of charming epithets that pepper message boards in response to any who dares to make perfectly accurate comments like “this is a song about a stupid redneck who can’t understand, much less adjust to, the changes that are going on all around him”.
The You Tube comments are brimming over with vitriol for those who diss this tune.
Here’s a particularly rabid one (typos left intact):
“die scum with yyour stinking comments i bet u r not here legally i wud like to get my hands on u and pour gas down your throat and light u up !!!!!! go suck on your fellow moslem non citizens dick scum lots of christian americians r waking up and it will result in all moslems thrown out or killed just like ferdinand and isabella did in spain !!!!!!!!!YOU AND YOUR FELLOW TRAVELLERS WILL GET YOURS SOONER THAN U THINk die die die!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Hard as it is to argue such well-reasoned , persuasive arguments, I would like to take a few moments to reflect on what this song is saying.
It is not a track I would normally waste time discussing but it gets my goat every time I hear it. And recently I’ve been exposed to it a lot as Italian radio stations have suddenly taken to playing it regularly. It is a single lifted off their ominously titled 2009 album God and Guns.
The chorus of the song goes :
‘Cause that ain’t my America – That aint this country’s roots
You wanna slam old Uncle Sam – But I ain’t letting you
I’m mad as hell and you know I still bleed Red, White, and Blue
That ain’t us -That Ain’t My America.
The five point check list of what makes Mr. Skynyrd “mad as hell” is:
1. Smoking bans
2. Lack of respect for soldiers.
3. Gun controls.
4. Lack of Religious ‘freedom’
5. The high cost of gas
Let’s take these one by one.
1. Smoking bans
Lynyrd Skynyrd (LS) says : “Sometimes I wanna light up underneath the no-smoking sign, Sometimes I wish they’d tell me, how justice got so blind”
Animal My Soul (AMS) says: The question here is not ‘justice’ but health. Chain smokers are always going to gripe about not being able to smoke in public but being free to light up where you please also happens to deny the freedom of passive smokers not to die of lung cancer.
2. Lack of respect for soldiers.
LS says : “I was standing there in Dallas waitin on a plane / I overheard an old man tell a young soldier “thanks” .The young soldier hung his head and said “it’s hard to believe you’re the only one who took the time to say a word to me”
AMS says: This is only one of the five I have some sympathy for. America has a history of gung-ho hawkish actions in the name of oil and democracy but this is the fault of politicians not the armed forces. People serving in the military DO deserve a measure of respect and sympathy. That said, this lyric strikes a false note with me. There are many opposed to, for example, the war in Iraq but there was also widespread support for the troops and I don’t believe that only one old man would speak to a soldier at an airport.
3. Gun controls.
LS says : “It’s to the women and men who in their hands hold a Bible and a gun / And they ain’t afraid of nothing, when they’re holding either one”
AMS says : This scares the shit out of me. The frontier spirit combined with an avid bible reader sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. No American president is ever going to be able to ban firearms but what are the rational arguments against sensible gun controls. At present it seems that in the US any waistoid with a grudge can pick up a gun in a high street, no questions asked. That’s not freedom, it’s just dumb.
4. Lack of Religious ‘freedom’
LS says : “Now there’s kids who can’t pray in school”
AMS says: Where are these kids? In the United States, in 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that public school sponsored prayer violates the “separation of church and state”. If LS are talking about organised prayer than they have a point but there are buildings called churches designed for this purpose. The subtext here is that other faith groups and atheists are growing in number and this scares Rednecks who believe that children should be indoctrinated to adhere to good Christian values. The pledge of allegiance to “one nation under God” doesn’t stipulate which God and doesn’t mean that a single faith be imposed on everyone.
5. The high cost of gas
LS says : “100 dollar tanks of gas”
AMS says : This price may be true for pickups and SUVs which have 30-gallon tanks A NY Times article conceded that “for people who love their big vehicles the pain is acute”. My response to that would be : for people who worry about climate change and love their big planet the pain of over consumption is acute.
Dr Johnson defined a patriot as “one whose ruling passion is the love of his country”. He was also quoted by James Boswell as saying that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. The context for this put down is not known but one can imagine that he had been confronted by jingoism akin to Mr Skynrd’s i.e. people who are so blinkered by fanatic nationalism that they develop fucked up notions about the concept of freedom.
End of rant.
Related link:
$100 tank of Gas (NY Times)
Well, you’re foreign and, as such have no reason to value American ideals. I’d suggest you keep yourself out of my country though, or keep such sentiments to yourself if you feel you must enter my country. Elsewise a right-thinking true son or daughter of America might just put in a grave.
It’d be a shame for that to happen. It would spend personnel and ammunition better used for exterminating our domestic enemies.
I rest my case!
Are you making this up Martin? I swear you’re pulling our collective leg – this & the marmite thing – yes, very funny but still all very bad – taste-wise. (btw – don’t they know the English can’t be ‘foreign’? – it’s everyone else wot’s foreign!!)
Yes. I thought the ‘foreigner’ tag was below the belt too but then again as George Bernard Shaw said: “England and America are two countries separated by a common language”.
AMS chose to blog about America when he’s no part of it. Hence my descriptive, “foreigner.” It would be the same if positions were reversed and I blogged about England.
The obvious subtext to the use of the word ‘foreigner’ was that, as an outsider/alien, I have no right to voice a criticism of America. You say, Jonolan, that I have no reason to value American ideals, but the truth of the matter is that I DO value the ideals of liberty, democracy and justice that this great country was founded upon.
Where we part company big time is in how you, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, choose to define freedom.
I think the thinly veiled death threat as a result of exercising my right to freedom of speech only supports my point that tolerance for other points of view is sorely lacking.
Quite untrue; as a foreigner you’re under no obligation to support America and can voice any opinion that wish to – as long as you stay off American soil.
Yes, if you as a foreigner came to America and spoke such things as you seem to favor an American – a true American – would take offense and might do you harm. Again though, I say that would be a waste since such efforts would be better spent eliminating our domestic enemies.
In other words, as a ‘foreigner’, I have the right to free speech so long as I don’t try to use this on American soil.
Thanks for this illuminating information as to how to stay out of harm’s way.
Exactly! Though I would suggest that you carry that idea further and avoid such behaviors on any foreign soil unless you’re confident that you can withstand the possible consequences.
You do realise, of course, that what you are essentially saying is that there is no freedom of speech in America.
Thankfully, I don’t believe the majority of Americans subscribe to such an extreme view.
And, now to suggest that I should think twice about expressing my opinions on “any foreign soul” is even more sinister.
American laws won’t stop you from speaking and would be against any who chose to do you harm for speaking against us. In that sense there’s freedom of speech.
I wouldn’t in these times put the American people’s tolerance for allowing enemies to live to the test though and I’ve rarely in my years of traveling the globe found a people more tolerant of actions than Americans.
If you go into a foreign land and speak against it’s people you do so at your own risk and don’t expect any to have sympathy for you if you’re killed for it.
You seem intent on portraying me as an enemy of the people of America which, if you troubled to read any other views expressed in this blog, you would see is far from the case.
Legal protection wouldn’t be much consolation if I got shot for criticising the views expressed in a rock song!
No, those are more widely held views than you think. The singer, if you can call him that, just profits from putting them to music. It’s not the song that would be your problem; it would be the criticizing the belief expressed within it.
Again though, you’re not American and you don’t have to be a friend to my people anymore than I have to be a friend of yours. As long as were not in each others’ countries and aren’t in a position to do measurable harm to each others’ peoples, disagreement on anything or everything is not a point needing escalation.
OPEC owns USA’s ass, and USA can do absolutely nothing about it. What’s 20 gallons of gas today? 230 USD?
Hey Baldray. Shutup. Go away. Die.
Thanks for the anonymous, illiterate and aggressive comment whoever you are. Lynyrd Skynyrd still stand guilty as charged in my book!