Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ook F Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
As I mentioned on Friday, today, I get into a really great conversation with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, where we talk about the country music singer Jason Alden and his white supremacist video, and what that means, what that states about our country, about what is deaned as okay that what Jonathan will bring up is a fact that these people who are applauding Jason Alden are the very same ones who degraded athletes like Colin Kaepernick for
taking a knee. Jason Alvin is singing about shooting people up or beating the crap out of them, acts of violence. Funny because he was at one of the wildest mass shootings that we've seen that happened at a concert he was performing at in Las Vegas, where fifty eight people were murdered, and this is him singing about murder and violence and guns. Yet these would be the same people that would wave their finger and try and cancel rap artists for doing talking about I won't even say doing
I will say talking about their lived experience. I'm just so sick of the bullshit folks. I have to say. And you know what ended up happening is that after the recording that we did with Jonathan, watched as Jason Alden rose on the iTunes charts. Because that's what whiteness does.
It protects itself. Not only should his music have been pulled and his music video have been pulled by CMT, his entire catalog should be pulled from various streaming platforms because he's a racist, He's a bigot, and instead of us in media are trying to part and parcel. Well, I don't know what he meant, and I don't know, and I don't know, and I don't know. Take people out their fucking word, right the same way that I
talked about Tommy Tuberville. Take people. Take these white cis, hetero supposed Christian men, these white supremacists, take them at their word. Stop giving them an opportunity to apologize for what they know is fucking egregious and disgusting. I'm so sick and tired of providing racist with the benefit of the fucking doubt because they do not deserve it. It's enough.
Coming up next, my conversation with our friend Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever we have the opportunity to speak with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzil, I am always thrilled. And today we're gonna talk about entertainment and I'm using air quotes because controversy that our friend Jonathan
brought my attention to. As many of you know who listen to me, country music may not be my favorite at all of music selections and genres, but Jason Aldan has made headlines and has had a recent video pulled by CMT and Jonathan, why don't you bring us into the why of the matter.
Well, yeah, I'm glad we're talking about this because it hits home where I live in Nashville. And also, as you know, my new book looks at music and guns and violence, and so it's a playing out of a lot of things I've been thinking about. But basically, there was a there's a country music star who happens to also be Jason Aldine, the same music star who was on stage during the Las Vegas mass shooting. Right, remember there was a guy who was up in.
The Oh my god.
Yeah, so this guy has actually seen a mass shooting up close and personal because he was on stage.
You are you gotta be kidding, man.
No, it's true, it's true. And the thing is, after that mass shooting happened, he had sent out, you know, can't we all come together and this is a time for us to bond. He was actually a hero to many people at that time because he was basically saying, we have political divisions and now's a time for us to come together. And so in a way, you know, here's somebody who saw this life event and was calling for common purpose and finding some common reason and can't
we come together across political divides? And that was kind of the last that people like you and me who aren't country music bands had thought about. It was like, cool, here's somebody who's among the good guys, of which there
are many many in country music. And then kind of out of the blue, this song comes out that's basically a version of a kind of riff off of the You'll pry my gun off my out of my cold dead hands Charlton Heston kind of deal, which is basically, you don't know what it's like to live in a small town. You liberals want to come take our guns. You'll never do it. You'll never get down the street before we shoot you. And there were so many i would say problems and unforced errors with this video that
he put out. One is that he shot the He shot the video in front of town hall in Tennessee where there actually have been lynchings of black people early.
Yes, let me just let me just say for folks. In a Hill article that was covering this story, they said that the song was released in May and had been heavily criticized in recent days after the release of the video, which was filmed in front of a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where black man was famously lynched in
the nineteen twenties. And in the video, the courthouse is projected with images of violent protests and chrome acts, including demonstrations from the Black Lives Matter movement in twenty twenty.
Right, And so this is to be honest, this is obviously not the first time we've seen this. I mean NRA TV didn't add about gun rights right after George Floyd that had black Black Lives Matter protesters. There's many, many histories of this exact genre, but somehow like this
particular issue, this particular timing. It really touched a nerve and a lot of people, Shannon Watts was tweeting about it, and other people who were gun safety advocates, and it's just been it's been a it's honestly for me, been depressing and terrifying because, first of all, here's a guy who really should know better, like this guy has seen this guy's seen it up close, and so to then put out this like right wing you're not going to take my gun's video with this video and these lyrics,
it just it's just I guess I don't know. This is my question is like what happened, Like, are the market forces so strong right now going toward trump is and fascism that basically this is what happens is it draws the market toward the right, and people say like, oh my god, this is the this is the market is to say we're victims of the liberal mob. And second, it's just so flatly not true in so many ways, which I'll just list a few of the ways that
this whole thing is not true. First is people are pointing out he's actually not from a small town, he lives in Nashville. Of course it's not And so Nashville has like a million and a half people, and so it's not like he doesn't live in a small town. So this is like a guy who lives in a city or suburbs kind of playing this idea of what it means to be in a small town. So that that's not Wait, I want to.
Wait, wait before you go on to number two, I just want to give folks a lyric from the song that goes just to that point. Ye he sings, and again I'm going to use that in quotations. Got a gun that my granddad gave me. They say one day they're gonna round up Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck.
And the thing is like, first of all, dude, you live in a city that Second of all, nobody's rounding up anybody. Like the idea that people are rounding up people, it's that's just like, that's like a it's a suburban myth, honestly, that people are coming to round up people's guns. So it's that's the narrative that the NRAA puts out every time there's a mass shooting. You know, Obama's coming to take your guns or blah blah blah. Fill in the
blank is taking your guns. Nobody's taking anybody's guns right now. It's just like we've got four hundred and fifty million guns in this country. I don't think anybody has a car big enough to like load up people's guns in the first place. But so number one is it it's playing off of this you know, you city people are coming to take our guns, which very flatly is not true.
For him in particular. Number two is, of course, you know, I work on gun suicide and the idea that like small towns are these safe locations where all the urban black people are protesting, and that's what we need to protect ourselves. Like, that's the narrative that is just so flatly not true. I mean there's the first of all, are a lot of mass shootings that happened in small towns.
But then also overwhelmingly the most common cause of gun death is gun suicide, which is what I showed in Dying of Whiteness, which happens very often in small towns. And so it's again replaying this very racialized, politicized myth of what gun violence is. And then the third part is this guy in particular was in a city, Las Vegas, where he actually saw a real mass shooting that actually was brought upon country music people and so and so it's just it's so it's I guess for me. Number one,
it's stupid, right, it's a it's an enforced error. But number two, is the market so skewed right now? Like, is the market so skewed that even people who like were in the center before have to like, I'll use.
A but I don't. I don't know, Jonathan, because here here's the thing. One, I don't want to call this an unforced error. This was not an error.
Yeah, this is a.
This This was not an error on his part. This was a literal and I and I and I, you know, tongue in cheek. I actually don't mean to say this, but I can't think of another term. This was a shot at him trying to get relevance and grab headlines. Right. I don't. Again, I don't pay attention to country music at all, But I don't think that it's often that people's music gets pulled. When your music gets pulled, you
have crossed like a line. And you know, and I think that again, this is not We live in a time of clickbait of really egregious and over the top behavior to grab headlines, to grab clicks, to get views, to get likes, right, And that goes for you know, a regular person on the street who's doing who's pulling a stunt to celebrities, right, So they're not above this.
And I think that for his point when I find the most egregious about this, aside from the song being horrible, aside from being in front of a building that was the site that of a quote unquote famous lynching, aside of all of that, his lie, right, this is what he says about his own song, Try that in a
small time. Try that in a small town. For me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors regardless of differences of background or belief, because they were our
neighbors and that was above any differences. You're a fucking liar, right, So let's start out right there, because you're putting up images of black people in a pandemic being forced out into the streets to defend their right to exist, and you're using that as a way to say we need to protect our small towns, when you know, for that none of those protests were happening in small fucking towns, right, They were happening in cities and suburbs where the shootings
of unarmed black people are at an all time high. These quote unquote white small towns don't have diverse neighbors because they've either burned the towns that were close to them to the ground write or circled their quote unquote wagons and created policies to make sure that people who didn't look like them weren't allowed in that same space.
So let's tell the truth from the beginning about the history of the places that you're talking about with regard to small town that have still have sunset laws on the books that if a black person were to be found there after sunset, they could be murdered and all would be fine. So it's just like, it's the idea to me that he's talking about, how dare people infer racist elements? And I'm that I'm pro lynching. This is what he says in this in this interview that he did,
how dare people do that? When I don't talk about that at all. You don't have to say the N word in order for people to think that you're a racist. The entire song to me just is is stench. The stench of it is there.
Well, and let me be very clear, like there are like this is This has led to a pretty important debate within country music. Like there are a lot of very incredible socially conscious artists. Jason Isbel for a sample, has been incredible. He's been pulling out of events and protests. There are there are there. So the debate within country music, I think about this about whether Elding was canceled, you know, which is of course the minute any protest comes up,
then it's like, oh, you're canceling me. But but it'll be interesting to see how country music responds, Like I think it's actually pretty unprecedented for CMT to pull this also and so and so it'll be interesting to see where this leads in country music. But there is a debate in country music which is similar to debate in
our country. And I just want to be clear that not everybody's on the same side, but I just want to I just want to reinforce a point you just made, which is the issue is not just about his personal racism or his intention. And I'll say that because when I was doing my interviews for Dying of Whiteness. I would do these interviews with people in the middle of nowhere, Missouri, and they would basically say, I would say, like, why
do you have a an AR fifteen with you? And they would always cite Ferguson, Missouri, like you know, a gang banger might come here from Ferguson, Missouri. I see what's happening in Ferguson, Missouri. And these were interviews that were being done maybe two hundred miles from Ferguson, Missouri, two hundred fifty miles from Ferguson, Missouri, and really among the whitest parts of Missouri, there was not a Black Lives Matter person for literally hundreds of miles, or.
A black person for nearly hundreds of miles. It's really alone and.
Act it was. It was in the book. I think I call it like a looking into a bucket of rice or something like that, like it just it was a bunch of It was just like a lot of white people in this area, which is fine, I mean, this is where they live. But the idea that this was happening in Ferguson meant that people were strapping up because this thing I and I would say, well, look, it seems to me like the protests are actually happening
in Ferguson, right, It's not happening here. But they were like, well, it could come here, they could come take my staff and stuff. So it was this idea of the reason.
Well like like, it's the I got to tell you, like, I know that your next book is about, you know, is about gun culture in America. But this fucking psychosis that white people suffer from in America that like Fox News and Magadam has been able to exacerbate but has always been prevalent, is absolutely crazy. To me. It is it is a deep psychosis.
Well, and let me be clear that the point I'm making is that it doesn't matter if Eldin was himself racist. He's tapping into that narrative, right, and so the problem isn't his intention or even his exact lyric. The problem is that he's tapping into that intention that we need to arm small towns because there are protests happening in Ferguson. And so whether or not.
No one wants to go to your small town, I also want to be very clear about that, Yeah, nobody's fucking interested.
That's I would kind of when I would do these interviews and people really were convinced that people were going to come to their town and steal their big screen TV that they had mounted on their wall and then take public transit home and I and it was so weird because I kept thinking, like, first, there's no public transit here whatsoever, because that actually requires taxes. But also like, nobody wants your big screen TV, like they probably have
a better TV already. And so but this idea that somebody's going to come take my staff or my privilege or my job or my wife like that is the anxiety of whiteness in America a lot of times, and so it taps into it. And so again I just think, I just think that. And again the frustration for me, you can hear it in my voice, I hope, is that here's an artist who had actually overcome these divides and said, look, man, I've seen this horror upfront firsthand,
and let's overcome our division. So here's somebody who was like on the side of, like at least on paper, on the side of like, let's overcome our political divisions, who's now instead doubled down on some of the worst stereotypes that tear people apart, which is this stereotype that black people are going to come take our stuff and that's why we need a gun. And so to me, that's my frustration is like I don't know, like like
I don't out Danielle. I don't mean to be like the straight guy today, but I really am the straight guy. I'm trying to say, like even as like a white American. I mean, I've studied this stuff forever, and it's like the narrative is so consistent, and I can you know, I can show you and add that NRA television did three years ago, which is black people are coming for your stuff and this is why you have to be armed.
And when I just I like express it enough that like I don't want your shit, but I.
Mean and and the other narrative is like remember the mccloskey's in Saint Louis. You know, like, oh, black people are marching by our house and they probably want our shit, and so we got to stand out there with guns. And so this idea that basically people want our shit, it's such a deep anxiety. And the thing is that the answer is to say, the answer is to say what Aldine said the first time, which is like, hey man, let's overcome our divisions and figure it out and work
create a system that works for everybody. But this narrative that people are coming for your stuff, and it's obviously not just about stuff, it's about social position and hierarchy and country and sexuality.
I look, I look, here's the thing, Like you and I both understand this. What I want to break through without having to do like docuseries after docuseries, or like reporting on people's anxiety, is that like, because I don't care about white people's anxiety, what I care abit about is how their anxiety fuels public policy right that destroys other people's access to anything right, whether that be a job, higher education, like the ability to buy a home where
they want to how they want to. Like, that's the fucking problem. That's where the investigation is. Is that you is that White America has made up an entire boogeyman of people that are coming to take their stuff from them. When no one wants your stuff. They want the ability to be able to buy their own stuff, to be able to buy their own fucking property. And you've created policies based off of your fucking anxiety and psychosis that
disallows people from being able to do so. And then you want to hide right and hoard your privilege and all of your shit. And it's just like you're hoarding it because you know that you don't fucking deserve it. Like That's the other thing, too, is that this all comes back to a place of, well, I don't want to be treated the way that I have been treating these groups of people for generations, right, Like that's that's
the thing is. It's like the psychosis that fuels the policy that leads to the oppression and suppression then fuels the anxiety and the fear you have about those people whose boots you have on their neck rising up to take back what you have extracted from them.
And the other part of that is that then when you get called on it, you claim that you're a victim again, like, oh, it's cancer culture, and.
It is it is the way it is. It is, like I got to tell you that, Like, you know, there are some days when I pray for alien invasion because like I just want to be fucking done. Like because it's just so like every time you think that you make inroads, you realize that the rod is just so deep, and there are questions that I have on a regular basis where I'm just like, maybe you just throw away the whole. Maybe there is no more amputation to do, Maybe there is no more surgery to do.
I mean, the problem, though I hear this a lot, the problem is if we burn it down, we would still be negotiating with the same people to build it back up. I mean, I agree with you, it's just what does that mean exactly? Like, what does that mean in practical terms?
I have no idea, Jonathan, but I know that there are days, there are months, there are years where I am just I'm over it, like and I you know, God blessed the fact that there are younger generations that are coming in with more energy and more information and more education that I had at their age to be able to pick up the mantle, because I got to tell you that, like, I understand the burnout, I understand the exhaustion because it's just like it's never ending, right,
and that's what it's like. What is the solution. I don't know, but it can't be banging my head against the fucking wall on a day to day basis, do you know what I'm saying? Like it can't be battling against the great grandchildren of the slave master. They're still begging for liberation, Like it can't be that, do you know what I'm saying? So like, I don't know what the solution is. I think if I did, I would have a Pulitzer and a Nobel Peace Prize under my belt, right, Like.
I would like to give you a Pulitzer and a Nobel Peace Prize already. But I would also say moments like this, honestly, they're opportunities, right. I mean, if he came out now and said, man, I messed up and I'm going to work to make things right or something like that, Like these are the moments where we see how messed up things are, but there are also opportunities to like look at the real issue and correct it. And I don't know, it's just the deviciousness is so deep right now.
But what I will say is that I absolutely applaud like you did earlier. I applaud CMT for pulling the video.
And the fact is that, you know, maybe the reason why the song wasn't pulled two months ago is because tons of people put out music right, Like tons of people put out music on a day to day basis, but once you see the visuals associated with what it is that he is singing about, you can't disassociate the two and pretend that it's it's not what it is that he's saying, right, And I applaud them for taking the steps, because this is their base, this is who they're this is you know, this is a part of
their basis, not the whole you know, country music bass, but it's sure as hell is a good amount of it right country music. Though to that point, I have watched, even from Afar, watched it become so much more diverse than it was twenty years ago, right when they silenced the Dixie Chicks, and like the only people that you saw were white folks on stage. That's no longer the thing. And I think that they recognize that their audience is a lot more diverse, you know, than it was, you know,
twenty thirty years ago. So bravo to them for taking the steps to you know, to do what's right.
And we'll have to see what happens now. I mean, there are well we can talk about this next time. But he's actually supposed to perform at a at a benefit concert for victims of the mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.
I mean, it's he should be, that should be, that invite should be rescinded, and.
There's a big tribute at the Rhyman and stuff like that. So again, how people respond again, I would follow people like Jason Isbel who are really really coming out strong I think here. But it'll be interesting to see what this moment. I mean, it just seems to I'm just so tired of like you get called on your shit and then you cancel culture as opposed to like owning what you did right. And so we'll have to see
what the response is. But I would say that maybe some important voices will come out of this that are that are counter voices to the narrative we're talking about.
Well, we will have to leave it there today. Jonathan is on that with another controversy next week. But I really do appreciate you bringing our attention to this because I think that it's important. And while he should while again I will say, this was not an unforced error. It should have never happened. He did it for the clicks. He did it for you know, he did it for the provocation of it all.
Well, and yeah, it's also like I guarantee you, like, people who are making like this, oh it's cancel culture are the same people who at one time were saying.
To cancel the Dixie Chicks and other people.
But I'm saying that like, like, it's very very easy for people to say, oh, rap music is glorifying violence and culture and stuff like that. So in a way, like, if if that's your critique, rap is glorifying violence, where sometimes rap does glorify violence. But if that's your if that's your metric, then you know, then you should take a stand here and say we don't want this music and this video glorifying violence violence.
One hundred Thank you Jonathan for always giving us deep analysis and more food for thought. We appreciate you hanging there.
Everybody.
That is it for me today, Dear friends on woke a f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.