Feelin' The Hate With Toby Keith Nation
Toby Keith likes to brag, "This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage." But when my reporting on the pro-lynching lyrics in his song, "Beer For My Horses," began to complicate the promo tour for his forthcoming "Southern comedy" movie of the same title, tough-talking Toby whined to the media. "The song was a hit and the words 'lynch' and 'racism' has [sic] never come up until this moron wrote this blog," he fumed to Contact Music.
When Fox News picked up Keith's comments, Big Dog Daddy's loyal fans bombarded my in-box with a deluge of indignant rants. While insisting to me that "Beer For My Horses" contained not even a hint of coded racial animus, Keith's fans simultaneously revealed their simmering resentment of Jews, blacks, and "faggy liberals."
Their hate-laden letters comprised the script for my latest video:
Toby Keith Nation Fights Back, a creative take on my hate mail
Keith claimed that "Beer For My Horses" was simply an anodyne ditty intended to evoke nostalgia for the Old West, where "bad guys" met justice at the end of a rope. "It's about the old West and horses and sheriffs ... and going and getting the bad guys. It's not a racist thing or about lynching," he said.
Why then did Keith sing so despairingly of car thieves, "corruption in the street," and terrorists who blow up buildings? Why did he invoke the swarthy boogeymen of the modern right-wing imagination right before launching into a verse about the good old days when his "grandpappy" would "take all the rope in Texas...find a tall oak tree," and "hang them high in the street, for all the people to see?" Maybe "Beer For My Horses" isn't about the Old West after all.
But since Keith has invoked that golden era of "horses and sheriffs...and going and getting the bad guys," it is fair to ask if he knows anything about the real history of lynching in Texas. Does he know that according to the Handbook of Texas, the Lone Star stood third among the states -- just behind Mississippi and Georgia -- in its total of lynching victims? Does Keith know that of the 468 people lynched in Texas, a whopping 339 were African-American (a partial list of black Texan lynching victims is here)?
Lynching was not, as Keith disingenuously claimed, a practice exclusive to gallant Hollywood cowboys played by Gene Autry (who couldn't even ride a horse) and Ronald Reagan. It was a mode of organized terror employed by groups like the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction to restore white supremacy in Texas and throughout the region.
Keith should immediately apologize for his musical monstrosity. Then I suggest he perform a cover of "Strange Fruit," the Billie Holiday anthem inspired by the anti-lynching poetry of Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol. Holiday often cried (watch her here) as she performed her haunting dirge. On at least one occasion, she was so overcome with emotion she could not finish. With Toby Keith exploiting the South's most barbaric tradition for big bucks, Holiday's tears burn like salt on an unhealed wound.
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I feel bad for Country Music
it really has been destroyed
they always reveal themselves
always
Someone mentioned the Texas Rangers as if that were to excuse this song. If you look at the history of the Rangers they were originally organized by former Klansmen who continued their work in Texas by dispossesing the Mexican landowners of their holdings. And yes, many of the people lynched in Texas were Mexicans along with many black people. The Rangers have a very racist history and not one to glorify and mythologize.
Actually if you look at the history of the Texas Rangers you will notice they were originally organized in 1823 by Stephen F. Austin. This was over forty years before the Ku Klux Klan was founded.
You need to back up and try again.
What's wrong with you? Injecting facts into a circle rant? Geez.
Considering the KKK was formed in response to the Confederacy (which Texas was a part of) getting whomped and their slaves all emancipated? Hell, the whole Texas Revolution against Mexico was over Santa Anna emancipating the slaves, too.
And they appalled the regular army officers and men with their terrorist, racist, massacres, rapes and pillage during the Mexican American War.
Officers and men who were not immune to violence of their times.
But could not stomach what the Rangers did.
I don't think it's fair to say those letters represent Toby Keith's fans. Those letters represent only the idiots that decided this was worth writing a letter about.
No, those letters represent his fans.
hahah don't they.
Hank Williams Sr. was a country music star. Toby Keith is no Hank Williams.
I'm willing to give Toby Keith the benefit of the doubt and assume he's not a racist. He probably didn't realize that certain demographics just don't look back that fondly on the "good old days" and don't find the whole "string 'em up" thing to be very amusing.
Toby Keith has been a registered democrat his entire adult life........
I have read that he is a registered Democrat. And yet he voted for W both times.
And since when have all Democrats, especially Southern Democrats been liberal?
If you knew your history you would know the one party Democrats of the South were the party of racism.
Until Nixon came up with his Southern Strategy. And Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
What were S. Dems most notorious for?
Opposition to Anti-Lynching legislation.
This song has been out for five years for heaven's sake! I'm no fan of Toby Keith's politics but why are we making such a fuss now? Don't we have more important things to fight about than what some singer thinks is a catchy tune?
It's a stupid song but is it racist? No.
Yes, it is racist.
Toby Keith should be ashamed of himself, but of course, he's too full of himself to ever consider being a bigger man on the inside and recognizing that we should not only all get along, but that there is a hell of a lot of work to do to make this world a better place. Say what ya will about Willy, he has done a lot to help the disposessed and needy in this country, and doesn't talk trash. TK can't hang with that.
His kind of fans like to act stupid and uneducated, play head games in their relationships and get drunk and rowdy. Why should they give a good hot-damn about global warming, the irresponsible leadership that's sunk our economy, or the fact that we've spent enough in iraq to put every American teen through college and get health care on top of that?
Why, that's for idiot liberals, didn't you know?
Have I got some disturbing news for you. America is chock full of under-educated people like Toby who have that type of mindset. Here in the Mississippi delta, I am swimming in a sea of them. They simply don't have a clue as to what this country is all about. They pine for the "good ol' days" when their European American ancestors ruled the roost, to the detriment of all others who call this land their home. In their fantasy world, everyone "knows their place," (with their own place being at the top of the totem loe) and by Jiminy, they had better stay in that place, or face the consequences. For a Native American like me who considers these people to be foreigners illegally occupying my people's land, you can imagine the problems that I am facing living here, since I don't tolerate one iota of their idiocy.
Tobey Kieth's music is as computer- processesed as most techno music. Pitci-correcting software keeps his voice in tune. His wack music is as phony as his fuax-redneck shtick
Yes but have you seen his ads for Ford trucks? Very patriotic.
i'm not sure about the song,the only thing i know is that toby keith is a pretty average singer and songwriter and never like his music....
This is what happens when someone is convinced that the choir will sing along with whatever song he chooses to sing to them, no matter how ill-chosen and off-key.
particularly Ironic among Blumenthals hate mail were the reference to "F-gy Liberals." Someone should tell Kieth's fans that straight men don't fantasize about "putting a boot up" someone's "a- -"
LOL! Well said. Also, doesn't Keith realize that gay men have been doing the whole cowboy look for AGES? Here in New Orleans we have a gay bar called Roundup. The chaps, hats and boots there would put Keith to shame. Not to mention that most of those guys are a lot more manly than ol' Toby.
I think Max is barking up the wrong tree here. The kind of justice Toby and Willie are referring to isn't the terrorism of the Klan but the Texas Rangers in Lonesome Dove. They found out their friend had helped in the murder of a family and even though he was a friend they still hanged him. There was no doubt he was guilty.
I have mixed feelings about the death penalty. I know there are innocent people of death row, but there's a side of me who wants a court to be convened, a jury put together, a trial and a hanging, all in the same day.
We've had heinous crimes where the perpetrator was caught the same day. One was the abduction, rape, and strangulation of a 5 year old, by a family friend. He was literally caught red handed, having washed her blood off in the Mississippi River and when pressed he took the police to where she was.
What's the point in keeping someone like him alive? He'll either murder in prison or society will forget about his evil 30 years later and let him out. Remember the trucker who cut off the runaway's arms? After he got out over the age of 70, he murdered again, a prostitute.
It's amazing what people come up with when it comes to a song & their meanings. It was just a song & I do like Toby. I have some cds of his but haven't bought one for ages. All I know he's not a bigot.
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