Try that in a small town
“Cuss out a cop, spit in his face,
Stomp on the flag and light it up,
Yeah, ya think you’re tough,
Well, try that in a small town.”
Jason Aldean’s song, “Try That In a Small Town” went viral this past week. In the music video, Jason Aldean and his band perform “Try That In a Small Town” in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee. This was the site of the 1946 Columbia race riot and the 1927 mob lynching of an 18-year-old Black teenager named Henry Choate.
Aldean was doing a dog whistle for the MSNBC woke and they took the bait and went crazy calling the song racist, promoting gun violence, vigilantism, pro-lynching and attacking Black Lives Matter (BLM). When in fact, all the video showed was violent BLM protests and street crimes. Note: Aldean took some liberties and had clips of radicals from Canada and Germany violently protesting and was called out for that. After a storm of social media criticism, CMT (Country Music Television) pulled the song from its rotation. All that did was give the song free publicity and tens of millions now went to YouTube and iTunes to look and listen for themselves. Curiously, where is this same woke mob when rappers have songs loaded with the “N-word”, talk about “smackin’ bitches” and “popping a cap” in anyone who looks sideways at you. Why are you silent then?
I get it. The conservative right is still upset over the Summer of Discontent, the 2020 summer months where your Constitutionally protected right to assemble and peacefully protest over the execution of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter turned into mass rioting and looting in many urban cities, especially on the West Coast. You want to partake in peaceful protests, I got your back. When the radicals and agitators started throwing frozen water bottles and bricks at law enforcement, flipping over cop cars and setting them on fire and throwing bricks through department store windows to loot anything they could carry, ya lost me. Who can forget the chanting of “De-Fund the Police!” and Seattle’s CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protests) Zone, where anarchists took over a few square blocks of the city.
That never happened here in Humboldt County. The reality is if you’re reading this, odds are you live in a small town. Half of your family, friends and co-workers drive pick-up trucks. Almost 75% of these same people own guns, whether it be a handgun, rifle or shotgun. We take care of our own, including our homeless population, where we feed them and offer them a place to sleep, should they want it. We don’t throw bricks through store windows and loot because we know the owners of these businesses. They go to church with you. Their kids go to the same schools as yours and play sports together. We show up together at charitable fundraisers. We’re a community and we stick together through earthquakes, floods and seemingly never-ending rain in 2023.
I understand this goes both ways. The conservative right lost their minds because Bud Light sent Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer a can of Bud Light with her face on it. Conservatives then boycotted Bud Light and their sales have fallen 18% since. The conservative right canceled Target over selling Pride Month merchandise. The latest is, they are going after the new “Barbie” movie, which promotes toxic femininity and China. Said Sen. Ted Cruz, “Barbie is pro-China propaganda.”
Don’t get me started on drag queens in schools and libraries. Right now, the political battle in this country is taking place in school boards across the nation over school library books that reference sex, especially gay sex or God forbid, transgender people. Don’t even think about letting drag queens in for story hour. Which I find a bit ironic, as the Catholic Church covered up its pedophile priests in costumes.
In the end, Jason Aldean is an artist and the controversy over his song and video have skyrocketed both to the top of iTunes chart. He’s laughing all the way to the bank and you’re lining his pockets. You can expect this song to be played at Trump rallies. Of course, Trump won’t be paying any royalties.