An Endorsement Out of Nashville: Fred Thompson is Homophobic Enough for Big & Rich

I used to work at Warner Bros Records but I had already left by the time our Nashville division had released its first album with Big Kenny (Alphin) and John Rich (pka, Big & Rich). When I first heard Warners had a hit artist called Big & Rich I thought they had finally broken into the rap business. They hadn't.

A kind of a good-time schlocky, commercial-country outfit they've been raking in enough dough with multi-platinum records that please people who love the glitz that they drive around in Bentleys and live a fast, somewhat sordid celebrity lifestyle. But John Rich is also an outspoken conservative. He isn't the only one in Nashville who is, of course, and he has every right to speak his mind and endorse Frederick of Hollywood or whomever else he thinks will best personify a third term for George W. Bush among the bunch of pathetic pygmies™ running for the useless GOP presidential nomination.

Perhaps Big & Rich fans and Fred Thompson supporters care but non one else could. Thursday, however, I started getting barraged with e-mails from distraught employees of Warner Bros all complaining about Big & Rich being homophobic. It stems from half the duo, John Rich, going on a gay-bashing, Rick Santorum-like jag on Steve Gill's radio show in Nashville, where he's a regular commentator. After a thorough tequila-fueled search for the most backward of the candidates Rich found his man, and has endorsed Thompson. And in a slap at the cousin-marrying Rudy Giuliani and at gay-Americans, he spouted off about gay marriage on Wednesday:

"I think if you legalize that, you've got to legalize some other things that are pretty unsavory. You can call me a radical, but how can you tell an aunt that she can't marry her nephew if they are really in love and sharing the bills? How can you tell them they can't get married, but something else that's unnatural can happen?"

I suppose far more "natural" would be Rich's own lifestyle as an embarrassing philanderer. He may be hysterical and obsessive about his irrational zombie-like hatred for Hillary Clinton but reports from the road are that when he's got enough substances in him there isn't a woman breathing he doesn't try to jump on.

Gay employees and straight non-bigots at Warner Bros, and that pretty much accounts for almost everyone who works there, are pretty disappointed, to put it mildly... and I'm not the only one getting complaints. One person who has worked on the Big & Rich projects wrote, "I tend to support all of our artists unconditionally even when some of their politics don't necessarily coincide with mine. I have been made aware of comments made by Big and Rich and I must say this is a real blatant slap in the face and it's somewhat scary to think that I'm helping to make artists' voices such as theirs heard out in the world. I feel deeply torn by comments that they've made recently and can't help but feel really uncomfortable having to see or hear them played in this amazingly diverse environment of Warner Brothers Records that to me has always spoken on behalf of the eccentric and artistic."

Another WB employee, an out front gay men, is torn between his disapproval of censorship and his disapproval of bigotry. He feels it's the company's duty-- their moral responsibility-- to take a public stand against this denigration of a class of people. "Rich's comments are not a political position, they are words of hatred that denounce an entire community and are taken as a personal attack on many of our families. CBS did not tolerate Imus's racist remarks against Blacks nor should we with Rich's remarks about gay families."

I spoke with one of Tennessee's most influential and respected radio programmers. He was still dismayed today and he said most everyone he knows in the music business is as well. This is what he told me:

"Much of the Nashville music scene is ashamed of John. We have felt betrayed because many of us had embraced him and his mantra of love everybody. John has made a career on the backs of many people, and a lot of them are gay. More than anything, his hateful comments have hurt them and they feel especially betrayed. John is entitled to his opinion. However, comparing gay marriage to incest was unforgivable. I have urged those who feel as I do to stop buying his records and songs that he writes."

That sounds like a very sensible suggestion. Nice artwork for this over at my own blog, DownWithTyranny.

UPDATE: WARNER BROS MAKES JOHN RICH SAY HE'S SORRY

Whatever the motivation, he apologized

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Comments

[roger3815]

This from the duo that brought you save a horse ride a cowboy. Just more of the same from the anti-gay zealot ditto heads. Live as I say not as do. And the same old tired slippery-slope fallacies.

[meandmagoo]

And what's amazing is that Rich is one the most gay looking people in music today.His appearance is so Village People cowboy-like it's scary.The first time i saw a Big&Rich video,I really thought he was gay.

Could we have a a musical Larry Craig here?

[WoodyCPM]

Nearly all contemporary country music singers look "gay". I keep thinking they're all gay. And living in Nashville, you hear stories about which ones have been had and which ones have been seen in various gay haunts and which ones have been enflagrant delecto with other guys. Why is it that in America we care so much what some vapid, ignorant, clueless, uneducated entertainer says? We worship celebrity in this country to a degree that is demented. It is always politically correct to bash gays. No one ever pays a price for it.

[cylindar]

I don't even know who these people are. They mean nothing to me and If I don't know who they are they probably are not important enough to be concerned about. Although I do think scum should be wiped out wherever it's found you have to at least know what toilet seat they are residing on. I mean are these people country and western singers or something. Who the hell listens to that shit anyways? People in jail, Restaurants with pink plastic seats etc.

[IronDragon]

Maybe Big & Rich should be Dixie Chick'd. Sounds fair to me.

[BMSstudy]

If owners of stations running Country music think their core demographic will be offended enough to change the station, they will be Dixi Chick'd.

[newunderground]

Merle Haggard, the Okie from Muskogee, has gone Democrat. Today's right wing boobs just got to be too much for him. Now that's a country boy I can follow.

[cuthbertallgood]

Hey I heard Merle this summer and he sounded fantastic! Seriously he was great and had wonderful players with him.

[Rand]

Ditto for Mary Chapin Carpenter, who performed at the 2000 RepubliClown convention!

[Maverick226]

I don't know. Two dudes singing a bunch of duets? Sounds pretty gay to me... ;)

[BUSHsurvivor]

I was going to say that gay marriage is NOT a political issue until I read what one WB'er wrote later in your blog. That being said, I agree it is not a political issue, but is being used by the far right holier-than-thou klan. It is a human issue and should be kept that way rather than spun as anything else.

[springsm]

Ignorant and back woods types...I am for the Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. The rest? Wouldn't have a clue. They go with the NASCAR bunch. One foot in the pasture and the other ...well?