It's amazing how fast things move on social media. One week, Jason Aldean is all the rage with his red-baiting homage to small towns. Now, we have Oliver Anthony offering a slightly more nuanced Rich Men North of Richmond that has gone viral and risen all the way to to the top of Billboard's Top 100. Not bad for a thirty-something who was virtually unknown before this twangy country song became popular among conservatives and was featured at the Republican debate Wednesday night.
Unlike Aldean, Oliver Anthony claims to be non-partisan. He takes offense to the right claiming him and the left discrediting him. Yet, this song plays to pretty much the same back country crowd as Jason does. Oliver has a soft spot for miners, literally and figuratively a dying breed, but still mythological figures in the Piedmont area where he grew up in Virginia and North Carolina.
Conservatives were having a pretty good summer until Barbenheimer came along. Their anti-Hollywood film Sound of Freedom turned out to be a surprisingly huge hit, with conservative talk show pundits thrilled to see it scoring just as well at the box office as Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible. Then came Barbie's massive opening and the same pundits were flipping out. Ben Shapiro spent 45 minutes castigating and burning Barbie in one video, earning him the sobriquet Mad Ken. They were a little less outraged by Oppenheimer, mostly because few of them bothered to watch it. Nevertheless, some weren't too happy that it quickly outpaced Sound of Freedom, relegating it to the box office dust bin by the end of July.
The only thing interesting about this movie was the way it was funded. It would be nice to see more independent films take this route, although without the same moral tone. Otherwise, it is just the typical conservative Hollywood trope of a white savior coming to rescue Latin-American kids in Colombia, loosely based on the exploits of Tim Ballard. Ironically, the director is Mexican. He made the film in Mexico but was unable to find anyone to distribute it until Angel Studios came along with their "gofundme" idea, which attracted mostly religious conservative investors. Although they like to claim they got the money from "thousands of angel investors." Turns out one of these angel investors was no angel at all.
For the most part conservatives have created an alternative reality that goes far beyond the Big Lie that Trump has been peddling these past three years. They seem to believe they are getting the short end of the stick from West Coast liberals, who control Hollywood, and East Coast liberals, who control Washington. These atheist liberals are engaged in all sorts of nefarious activities including child trafficking and grooming kids to be trans.
The first is not new, as we know. Back in 2016 there was the notorious Pizzagate conspiracy, where several high-ranking Democratic Party members, including Hillary Clinton, were linked to an alleged child trafficking ring centered on a pizza joint in Washington, DC, called Comet Ping Pong. A heavily-armed North Carolina man traveled to Washington to investigate the matter himself, shooting the lock to a storage room to see what the staff was hiding behind the door. This incident showed just how far some of these kooks would go to confirm these absurd QAnon stories they picked up on social media. Fortunately no one was hurt. Yet these stories still linger in the alt-conservative cyberworld and are taken to be true.
The latter has become increasingly problematic as states adopt legislation that makes it even more difficult on trans kids than it already is. I don't think these small town and backwoods boys will like the new Netflix movie, My Name is Otto, as a crusty Tom Hanks takes a young trans kid under his wing after the kid's parents kicked him out of the house.
A large part of getting your message out is to make it part of the mainstream through popular movies and songs. It's an old trick. I remember when The Cross and the Switchblade came out in the 70s. Walking Tall was also a big hit at the time with Sheriff Buford Pusser trying to clean up a small Tennessee town. At least the latter didn't project small town life as idyllic. It could be every bit as violent as big city life. Pusser died in a mysterious car crash a couple years after the film was made. Nevertheless, the message remains the same, "try that in a small town."
I suppose that it is why I am inured this kind of nonsense. It literally has no impact on me but I find it funny when one my progressive friends gets all excited about an interview with Oliver Anthony making the rounds of social media. I thought he was being facetious but turns out he took offense when I commented, "bullshit song, quite frankly."
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