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      The Guardian view on politicians and pop: don’t maim that tune | Editorial

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      The scene is Des Moines, Iowa, earlier this month. Up on stage is a man running to be the Republican party’s next pick for US president. A song starts over the tannoy. It is one of the hopeful’s declared favourites. Pumping the air, he lifts the mic and begins rapping along: “You better lose yourself in the music / The moment, you own it, you better never let it go.”So goes one of the best-known songs of the 21st century – and one of the most bizarre moments so far in the Republican primaries. Why is Vivek Ramaswamy – with an estimated net worth somewhere north of $950m – karaoke-ing about life in a mobile home? What does a product of Yale and Harvard know about having to wear a sweater coated with vomit (“mom’s spaghetti”)?Such questions clearly troubled Lose Yourself’s author, Eminem, who last week fired off a lawyer’s letter demanding that the politician stop using any of his work. Just as the song foretold, Mr Ramaswamy only got one shot – sadly for him.Politicians have tangled with pop for decades – just think of Harold Wilson’s canny award of MBEs to the Fab Four – yet in recent years, real political contenders have had to pretend that they actually listen to the stuff. Picking her Desert Island Discs in 1978, Margaret Thatcher thought she would subsist on a diet of Beethoven and Dvořák. Three decades later, Gordon Brown was asked whether he liked Arctic Monkeys and tried a cheery bluff about how they’d “certainly wake you up in the morning”.As the then chancellor later admitted, he’d never heard the band, let alone sluiced cider down his jumper to I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor. But he was right to observe that, from Strictly to the Lionesses, “Unless you can offer a view on each and every issue of the day, you are immediately accused of indecisiveness.” As mass-membership parties have withered away, so modern politicians must show that they are one of us through a feigned enthusiasm for popular culture – even though it has nothing to do with their job.In a few weeks, Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, turns 51. He ranks among the most talented performers in hip-hop, an art form that has marked its own 50th birthday this month. Both are a good sight older than 38-year-old Mr Ramaswamy, and are soaked into our daily lives to an extent that politicians can only dream of. Lose Yourself has soundtracked countless gym sessions, an advert for Chrysler and a campaign by Joe Biden. Its author may hate the politics of Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes, but artists can’t choose their fans.Yet it is odd to see a venture capitalist such as Mr Ramaswamy act the underdog; or to hear Old Etonian David Cameron proclaim his love for The Eton Rifles by the Jam. Part of how this era of supersized inequality persists is by the people at the top pretending they’re just like those at the bottom. Why, they even listen to the same music! The boss of Goldman Sachs is a DJ, and our very own prime minister enjoys rap. Although, being Rishi Sunak, he knows all the words to that 90s embarrassment Ice Ice Baby. Give us Eminem any day. More

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      in US Politics

      Eminem demands Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music on campaign trail

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      The rapper Eminem has demanded that Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music.In a letter reported by the Daily Mail, a representative for the rapper’s publisher told counsel for the Republican presidential hopeful that Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, objected to Ramaswamy’s use of his compositions and was revoking a license to use them.The letter, dated 23 August, became public weeks after Ramaswamy, 38, a financial investor and politics newcomer, mounted an impromptu performance of Lose Yourself by Eminem at the Iowa State Fair, bemusing many Republicans but securing a measure of internet renown.Ramaswamy also grabbed the spotlight last Wednesday, at the first Republican debate in Wisconsin. His angry and blustering performance, including clashes with other candidates and a claim that “the climate change agenda is a hoax”, harvested significant media coverage.The Guardian has reported on how Ramaswamy’s claims to be a political outsider stand in contrast to deep links to rightwing donors and influencers, including Peter Thiel and Leonard Leo.Ramaswamy’s love for rap, and for Eminem in particular, has been widely reported. When he was a Harvard undergraduate, the future biotech entrepreneur rapped under the name “Da Vek”. He also told the Crimson, the Harvard campus newspaper, Lose Yourself by Eminem was his personal theme.“I consider myself a contrarian,” Ramaswamy said then. “I like to argue.”In its letter to the Ramaswamy campaign, Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI) said it “will consider any performance of the Eminem works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date forward to be a material breach of the agreement for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies”.In a statement to the Mail, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy referred to another Eminem song: “Vivek just got on the stage and cut loose. To the American people’s chagrin, we will have to leave the rapping to The Real Slim Shady.” More

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      in US Politics

      March on Washington: the day MLK – and Dylan and Baez – made hope and history rhyme

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      One hundred years after the civil war, the treatment of African Americans persisted as a gaping wound in the purported land of the free. Then, suddenly in the 1960s, the bleeding from lynchings, bombings, beatings and shootings finally had a seismic effect. It galvanized the noble group who made the 60s so electric: the nimble, passionate and utterly fearless Black and white citizens who banded together to rescue America’s soul.By 1963, the Rev Martin Luther King Jr had become the leader of the first generation since the abolitionists who truly believed they had the power to heal the nation. Since founding his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, King had worked tirelessly to fulfill its mission: “To save the soul of America.”King turned 28 the week after he founded the SCLC. More successfully than anyone since Abraham Lincoln, this Baptist preacher united millions of Black and white Americans in a cause of moral righteousness. They were drawn to his brain, to his soul, to his deep baritone and to his bearing. The novelist Jose Yglesias noted that “King laughed with his whole body, like a man who trusts his feelings”.His Gandhi-inspired choice of weapons put him on an unassailable moral plane. In a nation drenched in violence, he ordered his foot soldiers to fight with nothing but courage, intelligence and decency. In spring 1963, the world recoiled at the cost of that bravery, when the commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Alabama, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, used clubs, high-pressure hoses and snarling German shepherds to halt a march of more than 1,000 non-violent protesters.When the white establishment of Birmingham gave in and agreed to remove “whites only” signs on restrooms and drinking fountains and to desegregate lunch counters, white terrorists bombed the hotel room where King and his aides had been staying and the house of his brother, Alfred. Miraculously, none were injured.A few weeks later, civil rights leaders were meeting John Kennedy at the White House when he said, “Bull has probably done more for civil rights than anyone else.” At first they were shocked. Then they thought it was joke. Then they realized it was true. Nearly universal revulsion to Connor’s tactics was a big factor in finally pushing Kennedy go on television, in June, to propose a civil rights act, and to deliver probably the greatest speech of his life.Echoing King, Kennedy declared: “One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free … Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.”King was exhilarated. He told the president he had given “one of the most eloquent profound and unequivocal pleas for justice and the freedom of all men ever made by any president”. And yet even after that speech, Kennedy was so nervous that Congress would respond the wrong way to a massive demonstration in the capital, it took another five weeks before he publicly endorsed the March on Washington, whose 60th anniversary we celebrate today.Courtland Cox, an early leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a key organizer of the March, recalled a day now remembered almost exclusively for the soaring words of King’s “I have a dream” speech but also a peak moment for the collaborative power of music and politics.A month before, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi, to perform at a voter registration rally.“It wasn’t just a concert,” said Cox. “It was a community event.”Dylan performed Only a Pawn in Their Game, about the assassination of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers just a few weeks earlier. That was also one of the songs Dylan sang before 250,000 people in Washington. When Lena Horne was introduced, she uttered a single word: “Freedom.”Seeger had performed the most important musical pollination of all, when in 1957 King visited the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, a training camp for civil rights workers. When Seeger sang We Shall Overcome, it was the first time King heard it. He fell in love with it. In Washington, it was sung by the Freedom Singers, accompanied by Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Theodore Bikel – and nearly everyone in the audience.Cox had spent years registering voters in places where “if we got caught we would be shot. Alabama was the most dangerous. In Mississippi I always thought I could get away from a bullet, compared to Alabama where they used bombs and dynamite. I thought your chances were better with a bullet than dynamite.“I’m not sure how you can really express it. During the most stressful things the music would be the wind beneath your wings. It’s one thing singing We Shall Overcome when the police were out there with tear gas. It’s sung in a way that maintains your determination. The music had advocacy.”Peter Goldman wrote all the most important Newsweek stories about civil rights. So he traveled to Washington for the march.He said: “During the mid day break between the mostly entertainment morning sessions and the afternoon speechifying session, some of the musicians were hanging out in the rotunda of the Lincoln Memorial. I’m standing there and Joan Baez walks up behind Bob Dylan and pats him on the butt. ‘Let’s sing, Bobby,’ she said. So the two of them start on a Dylan song. They were joined by Peter and Mary – Paul was elsewhere. They went on for about an hour. Folk songs, freedom songs. Dylan songs.”How big was the audience?“Me. It was one of my luckier days.”In his superb memoir, Chasing History, the great reporter Carl Bernstein writes that the Washington Star deployed more than 60 reporters, installed 10 special telephones up and down the mall, and even commandeered a helicopter to fly film to the newsroom. And yet, somehow, the lead stories in both the Star and the Washington Post failed to mention the main event: King’s extraordinary speech.James Reston, the celebrated New York Times Washington bureau chief, did not make the same mistake. In a front-page analysis, he wrote that King “touched all the themes of the day, only better than anybody else.“He was full of the symbolism of Lincoln and Gandhi, and the cadences of the Bible. He was both militant and sad, and he sent the crowd away feeling that the long journey had been worthwhile.”Bernstein felt the same way.“For me, listening to Dr King’s speech, with its emotive power, and witnessing the sheer numbers of Black and white people marching together, I was certain I had experienced the most powerful moment of my lifetime – the ‘someday’ from We Shall Overcome was drawing nearer.” More

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      in US Politics

      Rich Men North of Richmond singer condemns Republicans after song used in debate

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      Oliver Anthony, the writer and singer of the mega-hit Rich Men North of Richmond, hit out at Republican candidates for president who discussed his song in the debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday.“It was funny seeing my song at that presidential debate. Because I wrote that song about those people, you know, so for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up. It was funny kind of seeing the response to it,” the Virginian said in a statement on Friday.A stark lament over the plight of the working class, Rich Men North of Richmond is top of the Billboard Hot 100, the first song by an artist with no chart history to make No 1.The song has been championed by many on the political right as a populist anti-big-government hymn and criticized by some on the left for its attacks on welfare recipients.In Wisconsin on Wednesday, an excerpt was played at the start of the Republican debate. One Fox News host, Martha MacCallum, said Anthony’s “lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government and of this country. Washington DC is about 100 miles north of Richmond.”On stage stood seven Republican current or former governors and congressmen and one venture capitalist.McCallum said: “Governor DeSantis, why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?”Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor running a distant second to Donald Trump, said: “Our country is in decline. This decline is not inevitable. It’s a choice. We need to send Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline.”However, on Friday, Anthony released a 10-minute video, shot in the cab of a truck as heavy rain fell, in which he rejected that answer and denied that he was a conservative figure.“The one thing that has bothered me is seeing people wrap politics up in this. I’m disappointed to see it. Like, it’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them.”He added: “That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden. You know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song’s written about the people on that stage and a lot more, not just them.”It was hard, Anthony said, to “get a message out about your political ideology or your belief about the world in three minutes and some change. But I do hate to see that song being weaponized, like I see. I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own. And I see the left trying to discredit me, I guess in retaliation. That’s got to stop.”He said the response to his song had crossed party lines and that he welcomed a diverse audience.“If you watch the response videos on YouTube, it’s not conservative people responding to the song. It’s not even necessarily Americans responding to the song. I don’t know that I’ve seen anything get such positive response from such a diverse group of people. And I think that terrifies the people that I sing about in that song. And they’ve done everything they can in the last two weeks to make me look like a fool. To spin my words. To try to stick me in a political bucket.”Anthony also answered criticism from leftwing sources about lyrics which refer to welfare recipients and depicts some as obese with poor diets.“I do need to address the left as well,” he said, “because they’re sending a message out that … Rich Men North of Richmond is an attack against the poor.”“I do understand there may be some people who misunderstood my words in Rich Men North of Richmond. But I’ve got to be clear that my message … references the inefficiencies of the government because of the politicians within it that are engulfed in bribes and extortion.“The words say that there’s, ‘People on the street with nothing to eat and the obese milking welfare.’ That references a news article I read earlier this summer, that adolescent kids in Richmond [Virginia] are missing meals … because their parents can’t afford to feed them and they’re not in school.“And meanwhile, I think like 30% or 40% of the food bought with welfare EBT money is … like, snack food and soda. I think 10% spent on soda. And I want to say like 20% or 30% spent on junk food.“And that’s not the fault of those people. Welfare only makes up a small percentage of our budget. You know, we can fuel a proxy war in a foreign land” – seemingly a reference to aid to Ukraine – “but we can’t take care of our own. That’s all the song’s trying to say. It’s just saying that the government takes people who are needy and dependent and makes them needy and dependent.” More

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      in US Politics

      The protest song that’s taken America by storm hits too many false notes | Kenan Malik

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      There is mean things happening in this landOh the rich man boasts and bragsWhile the poor man goes in ragsThere is mean things happening in this landSo runs the opening verse of John Handcox’s classic 1930s song There is Mean Things Happening In This Land. Handcox was a tenant farmer and union organiser in Arkansas during the Great Depression. His family, like thousands of others, had been made destitute, crushed between the droughts that afflicted the dust bowl and the ruthlessness of east coast bankers and of the old plantation owners, the white oligarchy that had retained its power in the south after the civil war.I don’t know if Oliver Anthony knows of Handcox. A jobbing country singer from Virginia, Anthony’s video of his song Rich Men North of Richmond has gone viral over the past week, clocking up more than 20m views on YouTube, rising to the top of the streaming charts and becoming an anthem for conservatives from Marjorie Taylor Green, the reactionary Republican congresswoman from Georgia, to the rightwing political commentator Matt Walsh, all viewing Anthony as a righteous figure, whose “rawness” and “authenticity” speak to real Americans.In some ways, Rich Men North of Richmond echoes the themes of Handcox’s song, giving voice to a sense of a world divided into rich and poor, and of ordinary people as menaced by those in power. It also shows the degree to which the working-class tradition that Handcox helped forge has decayed, politically and culturally.Handcox was not simply a singer or songwriter. He was first and foremost a union activist, and it was out of his activism that his music flowed. He stood in a long line of working-class troubadours. From The Ballad of Joe Hill to This Land Is Your Land, much of what is now called the Great American Songbook emerged from grassroot struggles, songs created to organise, inspire and console. Some names in that tradition are well known – Paul Robeson or Woody Guthrie. Others, such as Ella May Wiggins, a millworker murdered by a militia during thenotorious Loray Mill strike in 1929, and Sarah Ogan Gunning, a nurse and midwife from the mining country in Kentucky, are largely lost to the collective memory.All helped create a movement in which music became a central strand in the struggle for justice and betterment. It was a tradition that, long before the civil rights movement, was committed to interracial solidarity. Not only were African Americans, such as Robeson and Handcox, an inextricable part of the working-class folk scene, but there was much cross-fertilisation across blues, gospel and folk.Handcox was an organiser for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), helping stage a major strike of cotton pickers demanding better pay in 1935. The strike was met with ferocious violence from planters, militias and the Ku Klux Klan. The union was crushed, and Handcox, blacklisted and threatened by lynch mobs, was forced to flee, joining the thousands who had formed a great exodus out of the dust bowl, the raw horrors of which were captured in Dorothea Lange’s photographs and in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.Handcox would have understood Anthony’s lament in Rich Men North of Richmond about the precariousness of working-class life. But where he was committed to collective action and unionisation, Rich Men North of Richmond expresses individualised resentment. It is a resentment not towards bosses or the capitalist class, as in the old songs but, as has become fashionable today, towards a nebulous political elite, defined as much by its cultural alienness as by its economic power.A boss who is culturally familiar seems less threatening than a member of the cosmopolitan elite. Anthony even gives a nod towards conspiracy theories about paedophiles (“I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere”). It is a resentment, too, not just towards the elite but also the undeserving poor, towards benefit recipients and welfare scroungers: “Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare”. For Anthony, “if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”. Only for some is the precariousness of life to be condemned.All this has turned the song into a conservative hymn, “the protest song of our generation”, as Walsh has described it. Most of those who laud Rich Men North of Richmond as being, in Greene’s words, “the anthem of the forgotten Americans”, have also long campaigned to deny those forgotten Americans their dues. They oppose unionisation and Medicare and abortion rights, view tax cuts for the rich as more important than support for the poor, and despise welfare payments as “money stolen”. A century ago, they would have condemned Handcox and Wiggins, Robeson and Guthrie, as treacherous “reds”, cheered on the strike-breaking militias, and probably joined them, too.It is a common theme on the right that when people take collective action to defend their interests, they are the wrong kind of workers. It is only when workers lament without resisting that their voice is deemed “authentic”. Yet, the decline of radical struggles, the neutering of labour movement organisations and the abandonment of working-class issues by many sections of the left has allowed the most grotesque of reactionaries to shamelessly pose as friends of the downtrodden.“I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay.” Anthony’s plaint rings down the decades. But as long as disaffection is shaped by a politics that abases working-class hopes, and is directed as much against the undeserving poor or the culturally different as against employers and politicians who seek to crush unions and impose austerity, rich men, whether north and south of Richmond, will remain in power.“The way they’re treated is a sin, / So I’m gonna get organised”, Sarah Ogan Gunning sang in her 1937 recording I’m Goin’ to Organize, Baby Mine. It is an attitude, and a defiance, as necessary today as it was almost a century ago. More

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      in Elections

      Analyze This: Donald Trump’s Thoughts and Speech

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      More from our inbox:Illegal, Nah. Let’s Call It ‘Aspirational.’Biden’s RatingsDog Parks: Fun or Harmful?Together, With Music Chris W. KimTo the Editor:Re “Donald Trump’s Way of Speaking Defies All Logic,” by Michael Wolff (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 6):Mr. Wolff argues persuasively that much of what Donald Trump says can be chalked up to illogical and thus legally inconsequential blather and bluster. Except that is true only when one evaluates the former president’s pronouncements individually. Taken in their totality, they reveal themselves as the opposite of random scattershot.Virtually everything Mr. Trump has said in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election pushes in the same direction: to try to reverse the election by every legal and — failing that — illegal means conceivable. Thus, the route to defeating Mr. Trump’s “my words are meaningless” defense is to assemble them into their coherent and sinisterly subversive whole meaning.Richard ScloveAmherst, Mass.To the Editor:Michael Wolff’s depiction of Donald Trump’s language and thinking as disordered rings true after years of hearing and reading the former president’s communications. However, Mr. Wolff’s argument that Mr. Trump’s actions regarding the 2020 election were likely unwitting and that this may mitigate his guilt in a trial brings to mind the old punchline, “I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.” That is, chaotic thinking does not preclude intention.Reports of the former president’s caution and calculation abound. He famously doesn’t use email, typically issued questionable orders to subordinates using oblique language, and tore up, even flushed, papers in a White House toilet. His speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 contains a number of examples of indirect language.Even if Mr. Trump’s actions in the Jan. 6 case were based on an irrational belief, is that a viable defense? If it were, it might apply to many convicted criminals who truly believed they could commit a crime and get away with it.Madeleine CrummerSanta Fe, N.M.To the Editor:Wait a minute now. Since when does a liar’s sincere belief in his own lies excuse him from committing a crime?There are legal and illegal ways to pursue a grievance. The question is not whether the accused sincerely believes he was wronged but whether he was able to distinguish right actions from wrong ones.Donald Trump chose legitimate challenges to the outcome of the 2020 election through ballot challenges and recounts. But at every turn, despite the expert opinion of many of his own advisers and loss after loss in the courts, Mr. Trump went further and pursued illegal means of reversing the vote.If after November 2020 he was not a reasonable person and unable to tell right from wrong, he should try his luck with an insanity defense.John Mark HansenChicagoThe writer is a political science professor at the University of Chicago.Illegal, Nah. Let’s Call It ‘Aspirational.’Jordan Gale for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Lawyer Describes the Effort to Overturn the 2020 Election as ‘Aspirational’” (news article, Aug. 7):Donald Trump’s attorney John F. Lauro has claimed that Mr. Trump’s requests to Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, were not illegal because they were “aspirational,” which is to say they spoke to a hope rather than a plan.In an interview on CNN he stated: “What President Trump didn’t do is direct Vice President Pence to do anything. He asked him in an aspirational way.”By the same token, I presume that if I asked someone to cooperate with me in robbing a bank, that too wouldn’t be part of a criminal conspiracy, because my request was merely “aspirational.”David P. BarashGoleta, Calif.Biden’s RatingsPresident Biden has sought to claim credit for improvements in the economy by branding the disparate elements of his agenda “Bidenomics” and by embarking on a barnstorming tour of the country.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, but So Far Not Biden’s” (news analysis, Aug. 5):President Biden’s weak approval ratings despite his administration’s accomplishments result from a combination of his age, his inability to forcefully tout his achievements, the generalized contempt for politicians of all stripes and the successful orchestrated campaign by his opponents to paint him as weak and ineffectual.Should Donald Trump win the White House next year, the country will have given credence to the adage that people get the governments they deserve. We will have brought upon ourselves whatever calamities a second Trump administration would deliver.Daniel R. MartinHartsdale, N.Y.Dog Parks: Fun or Harmful? Joohee YoonTo the Editor:Re “Dog Parks Are Great for People. Too Bad They’re Terrible for Dogs,” by Julie V. Iovine (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Aug. 6):Ms. Iovine makes the unfortunate logical leap that because dog parks may be inappropriate environments for some dogs, all owners should “forgo the dog park.”For breeds like labradors (a breed that Ms. Iovine and I share affection for), dog parks can be the only place to safely or legally engage in instinctive pursuit and fetching behavior in an urban environment.We should no more prescribe an end to dog parks because some dogs do not enjoy them than we should eliminate the symphony because some people do not enjoy Mahler.Brian ErlyDenverTo the Editor:People should know about the risks related to dog parks and then decide accordingly if they feel comfortable about them. Just as with most things, from riding in airplanes to eating street food, some of us are more risk averse than others.Consider a few things: Do you have pet insurance? (Often, the other person cannot or will not pay for any vet bills if their dog injures yours.) Are your dogs more confident or nervous? Do you know the signs of anxiety and aggression in dogs? Are you willing to watch your dogs and stay with them to make sure they are safe? Is your dog a bully (a hard one to admit)?One of our dogs was attacked this year at a park, and the other dog’s guardian didn’t pay the vet bills for the stitches and follow-up visits. We still go back, but now with an air horn and an extra sense of vigilance.Katie ArthVentura, Calif.Together, With Music Illustration by The New York Times; Photographs by Jeff SevierTo the Editor:Re “This Is the Music America Needs,” by Farah Stockman (Opinion, Aug. 9):Ms. Stockman’s wonderful article reminded me of my childhood, when we came to these shores in 1938 as refugees from Nazi Germany. My father, a fine amateur violinist and an avid chamber music player, discovered a small publication that listed amateur musicians and their self-grades as to ability.This brought a diverse assortment of talented musicians, violin and cello cases in tow, to our apartment. They were young and elderly, newly arrived as well as true Yankees, Black and white, with diverse backgrounds and beliefs, all connected by the joy of making music together, playing Mozart and Haydn quartets.The after-music “Kaffee und Kuchen” (“coffee and cake”) provided by my mother encouraged conversation and discovery about each other’s lives, and a good deal of laughter and fellowship. Although small in number, these groups echoed the headline, “This (Too) Is the Music America Needs.”Rudi WolffNew York More

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      in US Politics

      Rich Men North of Richmond punches down. No surprise the right wing loves it

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      In Rich Men North of Richmond, Oliver Anthony, a bushy-bearded former North Carolina factory worker, sings passionately about working hard for “bullshit pay”.Armed with just a guitar and his powerful voice, he identifies the source of the problem: “rich men north of Richmond” – federal politicians – who “want to have total control”. The song laments homelessness – “folks in the street ain’t got nothin’ to eat” – and a national suicide crisis: “Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground / ’Cause all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.”So far, so resonant: the song has collected more than 12m views on YouTube alone, and on Tuesday afternoon, it sat at No 3 on Spotify’s Top 50 – USA list.But things start to feel a little less empathetic when Anthony starts complaining about “the obese milking welfare”, reasoning that “if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”. We can all agree that politicians have caused many of America’s problems; it’s harder to argue that our country is being destroyed by short, overweight chocolate enthusiasts. He also rails against taxation, which he says means “your dollar ain’t shit”.The supposed welfare abuse sounds like a rightwing talking point, and Anthony doesn’t appear to have considered that the nefarious fudge rounds might be feeding the very people he mentioned with nothing to eat. But Anthony claims to “sit pretty dead center” when it comes to politics, according to a video filmed in his car the day before the video was released. “I remember as a kid the conservatives wanting war, and me not understanding that. And I remember a lot of the controversies when the left took office, and it seems like, you know, both sides serve the same master.”Still, a reference to politicians “looking out for minors on an island somewhere” – apparently a reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to elite figures – has also prompted speculation that Anthony could be nodding to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory positing that Democrats and Hollywood stars are drinking the blood of children. In the car video, Anthony claims child trafficking has become “normalized”, though what he’s referring to isn’t clear.It’s no surprise, then, that the song has been an enormous hit among the loudest rightwingers: Kari Lake, former candidate for Arizona governor, calls it “the anthem of this moment in American history”. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it “the anthem of the forgotten Americans who truly support this nation and unfortunately the world”. The far-right activist Jack Posobiec can’t “even remember the last time a new song hit me like this”.The rightwing commentator Matt Walsh, meanwhile, claims the “song is raw and authentic … Everything around us is fake. A guy in the woods pouring his heart over his guitar is real.” Wait till Walsh hears about Bon Iver in 2007, or Ed Sheeran busking in a train station, or pretty much anyone at a New York open mic on a Wednesday night.Still, these politicians and provocateurs have helped Anthony rise from obscure singer-songwriter to darling of the right in record time – sparking questions over how authentically viral his rise has been.On Twitter, Jason Howerton, who advertises himself on LinkedIn as having “helped grow media companies and political influencers grow their social media footprint exponentially”, has been a major proponent of Anthony’s work, sharing the musician’s life story in a thread, offering to finance an album – which the rightwing country singer John Rich apparently agreed to produce – and announcing the musician had just joined Twitter. It does feel remarkable that Anthony decided to share his life story on YouTube a day before releasing a video that went viral.But Howerton denies any claims of astroturfing – in which powerful figures orchestrate supposed grassroots campaigns – and, as Chris Willman writes in Variety, there’s no clear evidence of it. And whether or not it was promoted by outside forces, the song has clearly struck a genuine chord with listeners. There are many unknown performers who can work wonders with just a guitar, and who are equally deserving of a platform, but there is no denying Anthony’s voice packs a punch.Compared with the likes of Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and the rightwingers sharing his song, he also seems to have a modicum of empathy. Granted, the standards are incredibly low. But it’s difficult to imagine any of those figures offering listeners a sign-off like Anthony’s: “I hope wherever you are in the world listening to this, and whatever it is that you’re trying to do with your life, I hope that you succeed.”It would be nice if he’d apply that apparently heartfelt philosophy to his own lyrics. Winston Marshall, formerly of Mumford and Sons, compared Anthony to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie – but if either of them ever recorded a song mocking the poorest of the poor, it’s been lost to history. If Anthony wants to keep moving upward, he should aim his punches in the same direction. More

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      in US Politics

      Jason Aldean’s Try That In a Small Town sums up the delusions of the right wing | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Jason Aldean is a country music star and a big fan of law and order. He loves the law so much, in fact, that he’s willing to take it into his own hands.If you come to his (imaginary) small town and disrespect a cop or engage in any sort of protest, you will regret it.Such is the theme of Aldean’s new song, Try That in a Small Town, which is all about how the singer and his pals will aggressively deal with unseemly behaviour on their turf. A sample extract: “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face … Well, try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road. / Around here, we take care of our own …”A little later in the song Aldean elaborates further on what might happen if lines are crossed. “Got a gun that my grandad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up. / Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck.” He is, it would appear, referencing a conspiracy theory that the government is going to confiscate Americans’ guns to impose martial law.Try That in a Small Town was released in May but when the music video came out last Friday it generated immediate controversy. The video leaves little doubt as to what Aldean is trying to communicate: it intersperses footage of him singing in front of Maury county courthouse in Tennessee – the site of the lynching of a Black man, Henry Choate, in 1927 – with footage from protests, looting and civil unrest. Small towns are wholesome, the message is. Full of “good ol’ boys” who were “raised up right”. Cities, meanwhile, are hotbeds of violence … and diversity.That last bit isn’t spelled out – it’s not like Aldean yells “I’m a massive racist!” in the middle of the track – but the dog whistles are difficult to ignore. The song has been called “a modern lynching song” by detractors and the video was pulled from Country Music Television (CMT) on Monday. (While CMT has confirmed the video was taken off rotation, it hasn’t put out a statement as to why.) Fellow country star Sheryl Crow has also voiced her disapproval. “There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence,” Crow tweeted on Tuesday. She further noted that Aldean should know better, “having survived a mass shooting”. Crow was referencing the shooting at Las Vegas’s Route 91 Harvest festival in 2017: the deadliest mass shooting by a lone shooter in modern US history. Aldean was performing and got out unscathed. He was lucky. Sixty people were killed and 867 injured. Those people weren’t killed and injured by a Black Lives Matter protester. They were killed by Stephen Paddock, an angry white man from Iowa.Try That in a Small Town has generated a lot of criticism, but it also has fervent supporters. Including, of course, GOP lawmakers. “I am shocked by what I’m seeing in this country with people attempting to cancel this song and cancel Jason and his beliefs,” the South Dakota Republican governor, Kristi Noem, posted in a video on Twitter on Wednesday. The Tennessee house GOP leader, William Lamberth, similarly tweeted: “Loved this song since it was released and will continue to fight every day to spread small town values … Give it a listen. The woke mob will hate you for liking this song.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas, also didn’t miss the chance to stoke a little culture war. “The Left is now more concerned about Jason Aldean’s song calling out looters and criminals than they are about stopping looters and criminals,” she tweeted.Aldean, for his part, is furious at insinuations there is anything racist in his song about shooting outsiders who come to his little country town.“In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song,” Aldean tweeted on Wednesday, “and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it – and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage.”If Aldean isn’t trying to make a point about the Black Lives Matter protests, what is Try That in a Small Town about then? Community, apparently. “When u grow up in a small town, it’s that unspoken rule of ‘we all have each other’s backs and we look out for each other,’” Aldean wrote on Instagram when he launched the video. “It feels like somewhere along the way, that sense of community and respect has gotten lost.”Perhaps you’re wondering which quaint small town Aldean grew up in. The answer is: he didn’t. Aldean is from Macon, Georgia – a city with a population of about 153,000 people. Now he lives in Nashville, a city with a population of approximately 700,000. The small town he’s singing about is a product of his imagination.But that’s conservatives for you. Last month Nikki Haley tweeted about how much better the US used to be back in the days before marginalized people had rights. “Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country,” she tweeted.Was the past really that easy for the former South Carolina governor? By her own admission things have got a hell of a lot better for people who, like her, aren’t 100% white. “Years ago I was disqualified from a pageant because they didn’t know whether to put me in the white category or the black,” she wrote on Facebook in 2012. “I was neither. Tonight I watched my daughter get first place in her school pageant. God has an amazing way of bringing things full circle.” God also has an amazing away of depriving people like Haley of self-awareness.Aldean’s song doesn’t just epitomize manufactured rightwing nostalgia, it also encapsulates rightwing paranoia. People on the right are obsessed with the idea that big cities are violent hotbeds of crime where you risk your life every time you nip out for a pint of milk. In reality, however, big cities tend to be safer than small towns. A 2013 study by the University of Pennsylvania, for example, found the risk of death from an injury was more than 20% higher in rural small towns than in larger cities. “Cars, guns and drugs are the unholy trinity causing the majority of injury deaths in the US” one of the researchers told NBC News at the time.The pandemic, to be fair, saw a rise in violent crimes in cities. But even still, you’ve got a better chance of living a long, healthy life in a city. A 2021 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on mortality data from 1999 to 2019 found people living in rural areas die at higher rates than those living in urban areas. That’s because they have less access to healthcare and are more likely to live in poverty.So what’s next for Aldean? Well, I’ve got some good news for all the Republican lawmakers screeching about how unfair it is that Aldean has been cancelled by the woke mob: he’s going to be fine. Indeed, he’s going to be more than fine. Country music (and America) has a way of opening its arms to people accused of racism and making them feel right at home. Just look at Morgan Wallen, for example. In February 2021 TMZ published a video of the musician drunkenly yelling the N-word during a conversation with a friend. He was shunned from polite society for a few months but made a rapid comeback. He won album of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 2022. His song Last Night is currently in its 14th week at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. If it sticks there a little longer he’ll beat the 19-week record currently held by Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road, featuring Billy Ray Cyrus.While people on the right may be railing about Aldean being “cancelled”, the sad truth is that this will probably help his career. He’ll go on Fox News and yell about wokeness. He’ll wallow in his imagined victimhood. His song will probably be played in rallies for the next Republican nominee for president. Aldean hasn’t been cancelled or silenced – his message has been amplified. More