Notice: when you lose country music...you're a goner

[valarltd]

It's not just fringe guys like Steve Earle and James McMurtrie speaking out anymore. It's not the easily-ignored, heavily vilified Dixie Chicks.

It's Merle Haggard, Mr. Jingoist Okie from Muskogee himself singing about Rebuild America First
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOO3pF2ydCM
embedded under cut

And it's not Merle singing it, but he wrote it, and you can find him doing it at launch.com
"That's the News." The video is hooped, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MegvP3ypuy4

Darryl Worely has apparently recanted his previous position of Iraq=9/11 from "Have you forgotten?" and moved to "I just came back from a war."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwpO8Q1u4Ss

And of course, Kris Kristofferson's "In the News"
http://www.kriskristofferson.com/news/
(not embeddable)

"Burning up the atmosphere and cutting down the trees
The billion dollar bombing of a nation on it's knees
Anyone not marching to their tune they call it treason
Everyone says God is on his side."

Comments

[carenejeans.livejournal.com]

Welll... Haggard is really a loose cannon, politically. Much like Johnny Cash 8-) He's probably written as many songs that have been taken up by the left ("Okie" notwithstanding) as he has songs that have been taken up by the right. His own brand of working class radicalism comes the surface and he just blasts whichever end of the political spectrum is making him mad at the moment. So I'm not surprised.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I have loved his work since I was in single digits. And he is very much a loose cannon. But he has always loved his country and the people in it.