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Fourth of July

I’m familiar with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.,” of course.  We all areñ it’s been inescapable for twenty years.  Or so I thought.  It turns out, instead, that I somehow have managed to escape hearing the intro and the first verse until just this past month, when the song was used as part of Jamie’s fifth-grade graduation video (as the background music for his school’s visit to Fort Robideau).  That’s no doubt because, as a paid-up member of the lattÈ-drinking liberal cultural Èlite, I tend to avoid social occasions and gatherings in which the song is played and sung along to.

And needless to say, I think the song is odious almost beyond measure.  That’s not because I’m a paid-up member of the lattÈ-drinking liberal cultural Èlite who sneers at my fellow citizens’ simple, heartfelt expressions of patriotism; it’s because the song’s version of patriotism is completely contentless.  Two verses and three choruses, and Mr. Greenwood couldn’t find a single reason to love the U.S.A.?  Yeah, yeah, I know, pride, pride, freedom, freedom: “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” But free to do what?  To fire employees without cause, thanks to the at-will employment doctrine?  To abolish the estate tax?  To hold up a sign saying that Matthew Shepherd got what he deserved?  Or to protest foolish wars, march for civil rights, and support the right of kids with Down syndrome to be educated in regular classrooms where they can go to visit Fort Robideau with their nondisabled peers?  “God Bless the U.S.A.” doesn’t say, and that’s what makes it such a perfect emblem of a certain kind of right-wing contentless patriotism, the kind of patriotism that supports the troops by flying flags from cars while supporting a President who leads the troops off to needless slaughter and then cuts their veterans’ benefits.  Had Greenwood said anything about that freedomñ “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free of all taxes on my estate of $36 million,” or “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free to fight for the right to register Mississippi’s black voters in the face of murderous right-wing opposition"ñ one imagines that his song would be a good deal less popular. 

OK, well, that’s what I thought before I heard the song’s instrumental intro.  And all I could think, after hearing the intro for the first time, was Oh. My. God.  Tinkling electric piano . . . the kind of thing one associates with Lite Rock Radioñ more specifically, with abominations like Chicago’s “Hard to Say Iím Sorry.” What in Abraham Lincoln’s name is going on with that electric piano?  Is it supposed to make us reflective and sentimental?  Is it supposed to suggest sincerity and devotion?  Doesn’t anyone realize what happens to Real Men when they listen to stuff like that?  It’s not even dreckñ it’s something much worse.  It’s Wuss Rock.

Part of what’s going on with the tinkling electric piano, surely, is what went on with a great deal of corporate country music in the 1980s, namely, the Barbara Mandrellization of the genre.  (Bless old Merle Haggard’s heart, “Okie from Muskogee” is a real song, and tinkling electric piano wouldn’t be allowed within fifty yards of it.) But I don’t want to excuse the intro as being part and parcel of its historical milieuñ that would be a classic, lattÈ-drinking liberal cultural Èlitist kind of thing to do.  I want to suggest, instead, that the song actually saps its listeners’ vital essences with that electric piano, and then tries to cover for it by making the closing choruses increasingly bombastic.

But on this Independence Day, people, don’t be fooled.  We need our purity of essence now more than ever.  So if you’re grilling something good and fleshy today (I’m planning on making the kids hot sausage sandwiches with red and green peppers, and I intend to wash ‘em down with some fine Genesee Cream Ale) and you’re looking for some real American music to make you feel better about this land in these dark times, play X’s great version of “Fourth of July,” originally written by Dave Alvin when he was with the Blasters and included on the 1987 X album, See How We Are, when Alvin briefly replaced Billy Zoom on geetar.  You’ll be glad you did.

Posted by on 07/04 at 04:46 AM

  1. As a genuine Okie (note spelling) from Muskogee (as far from it as possible), I have to register a protest at your valorziation of That Song as real music.  It’s the worst sort of jingoistic nonsense and a fine symbol for everything that made my life hell on earth growing up.  It’s also made me reluctant, for the last 35 years, to tell anyone where I grew up because they will always sing it to me.  Ick.  Just ick.

    MKK

    Posted by Mary Kay  on  07/04  at  06:42 AM

  2. Spelling noted!  Sorry to recall, via Merle, everything that made your life hell on earth growing up.  I meant only that the song has actual political content (unlike Greenwood’s) and no tinkling electric piano.  But as a member of the dope-smoking, bead-wearing cultural elite, I strongly insist that everyone make a party out of lovin’.  And as for that line about how leather boots are still in style for manly footwear, well, who knew that Mr. Haggard was a metrosexual avant la lettre?

    Posted by  on  07/04  at  06:58 AM

  3. The insidious part of Greenwood’s insipid ditty is this:

    “Cause the flag still stands for freedom
    . . And they can’t take that away.”

    But the problem is that they can and that they have.  The Patriot Act, FMA . . . just where does one start? 

    Posted by Clif  on  07/04  at  07:46 AM

  4. I was with you until the Genny Cream Ale, brother. Honey Brown is the only drinkable thing that Genesee makes.

    As far as the “God Bless the USA” thing goes, there’s always a lite version of things for the masses, with little thought required. Lite religion, lite politics, lite beer, and, in this case, lite patriotism. It’s usually not good for you (or intrinsically very good) but it tends to be a marketing success.

    Have a great fourth!

    Posted by  on  07/04  at  08:31 AM

  5. I always hated it growing up when they played that song in church. “At least I know I’m free” is nice—even though I don’t have health insurance or a job and my house is cluttered with meaningless consumerist crap, at least I know I’m free. Right? Right?

    (I converted to Catholicism from generic Evangelicalism in part to escape contentless patriotism. Officially, no national emblems of any kind are allowed in a Catholic service—even in the funeral of a veteran.)

    Posted by  on  07/04  at  09:36 AM

  6. Right y’are, Clif.  That’s why you don’t see Ashcroft singing that part of the song. . . .  And Larry, the thing about Genny is that when it’s in cans, as it is in my fridge, it picks up the taste of the can in a manner matched only by the most sensitive beers, like Iron City and Schaefer.

    Adam-- I’m a former Catholic and I didn’t know that about the national emblems.  Thanks for letting me know.  But if you ever consider converting again, remember, we Agnostics don’t allow national emblems in our services, either. . . .

    Posted by  on  07/04  at  10:44 AM

  7. Heh.  Metrosexual Merle.  That cracks me up.  Sorry to be so grouchy, I just really loathe that song. 

    MKK

    Posted by Mary Kay  on  07/04  at  03:47 PM

  8. "where at least I know I’m free” is a misplaced modifier, isn’t it? Sloppy, sloppy writing.

    And as good as “Fourth of July” is, I’d vote for “See How We Are” as more appropriate for the day.

    Posted by George  on  07/05  at  06:38 AM

  9. Michael,

    Just reading your description of that song drained away some of my POE.

    I don’t think the song’s contentless patriotism is contentless though.  People who loved the song back when it was morning in America knew exactly what it meant to be free.  It meant NOT being a durn Rooskie.  Not being any ol’ Libyan towel-head.  Not being one of THEM.  Nowdays the people who stand up and cheer for the song know it means NOT being a tur’rist (read A-rab).  In this NOT-ness of the song lies its very typical American notion of virtue as a simple matter of NOT being like THEM.

    And I don’t think it’s just the right who defines virtue this way.  There are lots of us who identify Vice as being what the other guy does, which makes being virtuous an easy matter.  As long as I’m not HIM, I’m good.  We saw this run riot during the Impeachment craziness.  No matter how many Republicans exposed themselves a hypocrites, liars, villains, and cads in their attempts to get Clinton, the definition of vice always stayed:  What Bill did!

    Yeah, I cheated on my wife, but I didn’t do it in the Oval Office.

    Yes, I am a lying whore, but at least I didn’t lie about it to a special prosecutor.

    The entire Bush administration bases its incredible moral conceit on the premise that they are NOT doing what Clinton did (or as they imagine he would have done) and therefore they are good.

    I think of this as a kind of degenerate, vestigal Puritanism---all sin comes from without.  Temptation is brought by the other, and virtue lies in not allowing the other in.  Hypocrisy is the natural posture then, and the Puritan spends a lot of time standing at the front of the temple telling God what a good guy he, the Puritan, is because he’s not like those tax collectors on their knees in back.

    And I know a lot of right-thinking left-leaning latte-swilling elitists who are exactly like this.  I’m not accusing anyone here of this, honest.  But we all know liberals who make virtues of NOT liking “Good Bless the USA” or Merle Haggard.  Lots of us make virtues of NOT being smokers, of NOT being SUV owners, of NOT watching Survivor or Cops or whatever Paris Hilton is up to on the tube these days, of NOT being the kind of person who would do any of those things.

    So I think “God Bless the USA” is very clear in its politics:  “I’m not you, bub, and you stink.” And, unfortunately, I don’t think in that it’s peculiarly right wing.

    Posted by  on  07/05  at  06:40 AM

  10. Dave-- You’re right on both counts (the song itself and the dynamics of abjection more generally).  In fact, I know plenty of those right-thinking left-leaning elitists, and we can be glad we’re not like them! When I get around to seeing F9/11 and writing my Moore post I’ll say more about this, b/c I distrust Moore (sloppy, buffoonish version of cultural criticism), but I distrust my distrust just as strongly (college professor with accents on name sneering at America’s only fat, meat-eating crossover leftist with real affinity for working-class folk) while distrusting my distrust of that distrust. . . .

    Posted by  on  07/05  at  09:48 AM

  11. Merle Haggard is a lot more complicated than that one song.
    Recently, he’s criticized Bush and the “patriot” act.
    a recent interview;
    http://tinyurl.com/2ofdy

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  12:53 AM

  12. Michael,

    I’m looking forward to your post on F11.

    Careful with all that self-distrust.  There’s a degenerate, vestigal Puritanism, and then there’s the real honest to Jehovah deal, and liberal intellectuals are its true inheritors.  Emerson may have given it a smile, and Thoreau dragged it out of doors, but they didn’t stamp it out, they passed it along.  Jonathan Edwards and his spider lurk at the back of all our minds.
    Makes it awful hard to just sit back and enjoy a movie.

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  03:44 AM

  13. Hi, another Dave.  Hey, not only is Merle more complicated than that song, even that song is more complicated than that song.  And whether he wrote it tongue-half-in-cheek or not, all I know is that he also wrote “Mama Tried,” which is more than good enough for me.  And George, yeah, “See How We Are” is a more thematically appropriate from the X corpus, I know, but it does not actually rock.  In fact, it barely makes the needles twitch on the Rock-o-Meter. Also, it’s declamatory.  Whereas when I hear, say, “Under the Big Black Sun” I think, goddamn, that’s some fine Amerkun music right there.

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  04:03 AM

  14. The Bakersfield Boogie Boys did an outstanding version of “Okie.” It was included on the original KROQ “Devotees” album of mostly cover versions of Devo tunes. Their tuneless choral zombie chanting is reminiscent of the aliens in the Firesign Theater’s “Everything You Know is Wrong.” The manically repetitive background is driving, yet mechanical and insincere. They even changed some of the words randomly in a way that invariably kills the rhyme, further blunting the original message. “We like holding hands and pitching wood.” Every measure drips with sarcasm.  I learned a lot from it.

    I must add that I used to ride a school bus for upwards of an hour a day, and for some of those years, the driver had a radio that was congenitally stuck on a local country-western station. As hideously awful as much of the whiney, alternately boastful and self-pitying sludge of the songs was, they at least had some interesting instrumental backings. A degree of magnitude worse was their notion of humor. Every day at the same time, KUAD would play Hudson and Landry’s “Ajax Liquor Store” single, consisting of a disk jockey pretending to be a drunk calling a wrong number and another disk jockey who would repeat everything he said. “I’m a unfunny moronic caricature of a jerk.” “You’re an unfunny moronic caricature of a jerk?” “That’s righ’, I’m a...” and so on.

    Nowadays, I seldom ever have to hear anything I don’t want to, so I’m a lot calmer and my nails look better.

    Posted by Kip W  on  07/06  at  04:55 AM

  15. Saw Merle on Fox on my pm break at work (I was channel surfing, OK? really.)a couple months ago.  The helmet-haired host didn’t know what to do with him ("Excuse me, weren’t you the guy that wrote Okie?” must have been going through his hairy head).
    A couple weeks later Charlie Daniels was on - I couldn’t watch that, but I’m sure Fox found what it was looking for.

    I tried to like X, really, I did.  But both songs mentioned are great.

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  06:01 PM

  16. This has always seemed like a resoundingly empty excuse for a patriotic song to me, too, and I’m a Canadian who *likes* Americans and has actually teared up over “America the Beautiful”.

    But here’s an odd thing: I found your post via TBogg, who also re-posted a typical piece of nonsense from Kathryn Lopez at NRO, who was annoyed that Clay Aiken sang “I wonít forget the ones who died” instead of “I wonít forget the men who diedî when he performed this song on Sunday at the Washington Mall. What’s interesting is that Aiken didn’t just use gender inclusive language, he’s a graduate in special education who has started a foundation to provide services and financial assistance for the integration of children with and without disabilities in educational, employment and recreational settings. So yeah, at least one person who has sung this song is glad to be free to “support the right of kids with Down syndrome to be educated in regular classrooms where they can go to visit Fort Robideau with their nondisabled peers”. 

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  07:46 PM

  17. Here’s to Clay Aiken.  And I am stunned yet again (as I am every six hours, without fail) by the sheer pettiness and triviality of K.Lo’s version of cultural criticism.  Thanks for the back story, Mary.

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  08:25 PM

  18. Ha--I associate “God Bless the USA” with the default southern belle beauty pageant talent competition number. And I like Genny Cream Ale...wish I could get it in the Midwest.

    Barbara Mandrellization: Hilarious. I’m going to try to use that term in a sentence today.

    Posted by Clancy  on  07/07  at  07:57 AM

  19. Here’s a tie between Haggard and X...my favorite band, Old 97’s.  On their first big CD (Hitchike to Rhome) they did a super cover of “Mama Tried.” On a later album (Too Far to Care) Rhett Miller duetted with Exene Cervenka with the tune “Four Leaf Clover.”

    There are no tinkly electric pianos on any Old 97’s songs.

    And I am a big big big big geek…

    Posted by  on  07/07  at  01:25 PM

  20. Old 97s rock.  I had the extraordinary chance to see them from about five feet away on (no foolin’wink July 4, 1997, when they played a warmup gig in Champaign, Illinois before heading out on tour.  Great fun, and a great gig.  Too Far to Care is one of my faves.  From one geek to another, Kathy.  And though they’re a bit far from the country punk path, let’s not forget alt.rock’s Ur-geeks, the Feelies. . . .

    Posted by  on  07/07  at  01:45 PM

  21. Employment-at-will or ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his needs’?

    The estate tax is criminal.  My mother (no college) worked hard as a secretary saved here money, invested in the stock market - not like John Edwards though, and now is retired and getting by.  Why should what she earned not benefit her family if that is what she chooses?

    Let those with the unearned income of Kerry, Edwards, and Pelosi get taxed to death!

    Posted by  on  07/08  at  11:23 AM

  22. Hi, zzx375.  Good to hear your mother managed to amass an estate worth over $675,000!  The estate tax doesn’t affect anyone else, you know.  And couples were exempt on estates up to $2 million (surviving spouses did not pay tax on the estate when the other spouse died).  And of course it should be levied on Democrats and Republicans alike.

    Posted by  on  07/08  at  11:39 AM

  23. Ugh.  Genny Creme.  The first beer that ever made me chuck.  And Iron City?!  There is GOOD beer out there, Michael, honest.  My mom used to go to the beer warehouse on Saturdays and find the most obscure beer she’d never tried, then buy a case of it.  It’d be the only thing available when football was on, so if you wanted to drink, that was it.  Sometimes, it was pretty good.  Sometimes it was Robin Hood ale (because she liked the cans).  It took me many years to recover, and I naturally became a beer snob (the sports fan version of latte-drinking liberal elite).

    As for the estate tax, a good tax lawyer can reduce the tax rate on even large estates or suggest ways to deed some of the estate to heirs while still alive.  If you don’t want to pay the lawyer, there are dozens of books you can slog through that tell you how to do it.  Trust me, there’s a goodly portion of land in the midwest with my eventual name on it and it came to my dad through my grandma without a whole lot of estate tax happening.  (When it comes to me, I’m giving it to my sister in trust because I’ll be damned if I can live in a town of less than 500....) So all that stuff they peddle about how bad the estate tax is for small farmers and retired mill workers is crap.  If it’s important to keep it in the family, do the research.

    Posted by  on  07/08  at  02:42 PM

  24. I must say that my last post contained stunningly bad syntax.  I think perhaps I should tend to my blood-sugar levels before attempting intelligent commentary.  I ask the forgiveness of all who witnessed such travesty.

    Posted by  on  07/08  at  02:45 PM

  25. Hey, Reba, don’t worry about the syntax-- it’s the estate tax we’re on about here.  (Now everyone knows that I am not above cheap puns.) I was just giving zzx375 the baseline numbers, of course.  Really creative probate attorneys can structure estates a million ways, through charitable donations and (as you point out) gifts made while the estate owners are still alive.  As for those family farms and little houses on the prairie, I know perfectly well how many of them have been lost to the estate tax:  none.  The whole family-farm myth was cooked up in the lab by evil scientists Frank Luntz and Grover Norquist.  Bwah hah hah hah.

    And I assure you that I can be a beer snob when the occasion requires.  Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, Chimay Ale, Four-X, and (on the home front) Red Hook IPA are a couple of my faves.  (Though I find most of the far-West microbrews too sickly sweet.) But in order to be a proper lefty beer snob, I think, you also have to be familiar with Olympia, Schmidt’s, Rheingold, Pabst, Utica Club, Blatz, Narragansett, Stroh’s, Ballantine’s, and of course Yuengling. . . .

    Posted by  on  07/08  at  04:37 PM

  26. Yeungling?!  Wow.  Thanks for bringing up the favorite brew of the Anthropology graduate students at SUNY Binghamton (at least when I used to hang with them in the dark ages of the 1980’s....).  I agree that you have to know your mediocre beer before you can appreciate the good stuff.  Personal fav:  Bellhaven Scottish Ale.  Dark without being thick, strong without being bitter.  Expensive as hell, so not found too often in my house.  I’ve got this thing about feeding the kids…

    I’m glad that someone knows the crap being put out there about the estate tax.  And just to nitpic, zzx375, if you’re going to criticize the rich for having unearned money, how can you get angry about being taxed on money earned by your mom—wouldn’t that be money unearned by you?  The thing about inherited money is that someone had to make it.  That said someone chose to hand it down to their heirs rather than leave it to the cat should be applauded, don’t you think?

    Posted by  on  07/09  at  04:36 AM

  27. Yuengling is actually the oldest brewery in the US, dating from 1829-- apparently, before all the Germans showed up, people were drinking bathtub gin and Johnny Appleseed. . . .  But I actually meant my snob remark the other way around:  you have to drink the good stuff before you can appreciate the swill for what it is.

    I have fond memories of Bloomington-Normal, by the way.  Say hello to everyone for me.  And let’s levy a 100 percent tax on every cat who inherits an estate!  The myths spread by movies like The Aristocats must be countered with good common sense!

    Posted by  on  07/09  at  11:18 AM

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