STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Hank Williams Jr. Blasts PC With New Song
By Staff News & Analysis - October 12, 2011

I'll keep my freedom

I'll keep my guns

Try to keep my money

And my religion too …

I'm gonna keep my big V8

Keep my friends the same

Keep the government outta my business

And y'all can keep the change …

I'll keep the USA and y'all can keep the change …

(- Keep the Change, Hank Williams Jr.)

Dominant Social Theme: Hank Williams Jr. is acting out. He's just a rowdy, silly country singer. This new song of his is beyond the pale and should never have been released. Where is his proper apology? …

Free-Market Analysis: Hank Williams Jr. was basically fired the other day for mentioning the "H" word, as in Hitler. At least that's how it came out on an appearance with "Fox and Friends." In this PC-colored world, it was only a matter of time before he and his song – and his "rowdy friends" – departed from Monday Night Football where his famous song had introduced the big game for some 20 years.

The crime? Specifically, he likened a golf game between President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner to one in which Boehner played with … Hitler. "That would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu. Not hardly. In the shape this country is in?"

ESPN soon after removed his "opening" song – the one that starts Are you ready for some football? … They issued a statement that read, "While Hank Williams, Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight's telecast."

This didn't set well with Hank Jr., who then decided to up the ante by quitting, and taking his friends with him. Initially, to be sure, he tried some half-hearted damage control, releasing a statement saying he was misunderstood. "Some of us have strong opinions … My analogy was extreme – but it was to make a point. I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me – how ludicrous that pairing was."

Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends indicated at the time that the analogy puzzled him. Williams kept digging in his stubborn way: "I'm glad you don't, brother, because a lot of people do. They're the enemy… Obama! And Biden! Are you kidding?"

He finally moved on, stating suddenly what he should probably have begun with, that … "The one that makes the most sense is Herman Cain." But it was too late in this PC conscious world. Williams Jr. was cooked. And as soon as he understood it, he quit.

Supposedly, Williams intends to run for Senate in Tennessee in 2012 as a Republican. But pundits have been saying his Hitler remark has incinerated the proverbial goose.

However … they may be wrong!

People are really angry these days in the US and throughout the West. Hank Jr. – instead of backing down – has gone and written a song about the incident (see excerpted lyrics above) that suggests in its final lyric that people boycott ESPN. He doesn't sound properly contrite.

President Barack Obama is not Hitler of course. But then again, the Anglosphere elites evidently and obviously funded at least part of Hitler's rise, so the idea that the US political system has no involvement with Hitler except as an enemy is simply not accurate.

There's plenty of evidence (much on the 'Net) that right up until the war, British and American banks and companies did business with Germany and saw it as a kind of role model for how industry and state could cooperate to build prosperity. There's evidence some of this collaboration actually continued DURING the war.

The US today, in our view, is being reshaped by the elites to resemble pre-war fascist Germany. That goes for the rest of the West as well. Even the locution is similar, with President George W. Bush providing the nation with "Homeland Security" after 9/11.

Ironically, Williams's views are evidently of the neo-con variety. He seems to be a pro-war "patriot." As someone who wants to run for Senate, he is not apt to rock the boat with a libertarian perspective, and he obviously doesn't back libertarian-Republican Congressman Ron Paul for president.

Leaving Williams's political views aside, we wonder nonetheless if one could construe this as yet another watershed moment. Williams is evidently and obviously defying the standard political correctness that was ubiquitous in the 20th century. He is also staking some modest new ground with his song by focusing his mainstream audience on politics rather than romance within the context of this controversy.

People often don't realize it – so immersed are they in the metaphorical boiling water – but for the most part Western popular music focuses on love songs, longing and girl-meets-boy lyrics. Now it's true that country music in the US has a slightly broader palate, but we'd argue that the observation is valid there as well. The 60s are long gone.

And yet … perhaps they are returning. We think Hank Williams's song may in a sense encapsulate this change. It is signaling (as no doubt others have) a new (anti-elite) meme that runs counter to a carefully cultivated Anglosphere dominant social theme having to do with the implementation of artistic political passivity. One sees this not only in music but in relentlessly abstract modern art – art drained of all meaning and sentiment.

For the elites, ensuring artistic insignificance is an important part of mind control. Keeping youngsters focused on "sex, drugs and rock and roll" was a great way to ensure that the larger political structure never came in for generational scrutiny.

All that may be changing across a broad spectrum of the arts. We've noticed the upsurge of popular political songs on the Internet, especially of the conservative and libertarian variety. Singing and songs, divorced from the straightjacket of corporate control, veer toward the consequential again.

Hank Williams didn't even bother to package his song for selling; he simply released it on Youtube in addition to placing it on his own website. It's such a simple release that in the version we saw the screen stayed black. And yet thousands are listening and thousands more – maybe millions – doubtless will.

Are the "sounds of silence" shattering? The comments below the video on the Youtube thread were interesting as well. Many wished Williams Jr. good luck and congratulated him for sticking up for his beliefs.

Editor's Note: This just in from CNN … New Hank Williams Jr.'s defiant song logs 150,000 downloads in 24 hours … A good number of Hank Williams, Jr.'s rowdy friends are backing the outspoken country star a week after ESPN dropped his long-running musical introduction to Monday Night Football. Williams's song "All My Rowdy Friends" had served as the theme song for MNF for 20 years, but was dropped after comments he made last week on the Fox News morning show "Fox and Friends." … In a defiant response to his song being pulled, Williams released a new single, "Keep the Change," for free download on his website. So far, some 150,000 people have taken him up on the offer, a publicist said Monday.

After Thoughts

The Internet Reformation continues apace in our view. We look for incidents that seem to indicate that certain elitist dominant and sub-dominant social themes are foundering under the pressure of the truth-telling of 'Net technology. Is this one?

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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