THE MORNING RANT: Media Smear Merchants, Jason Aldean, and Racism By Historic Association (“Show Me the Man or Video, and I’ll Find You the Racism”)

The smear campaign by the regime media against Jason Aldean for his song and video “Try That in a Small Town” is beyond despicable. Just look at this headline from NBC News. The left-wing ruling class and its media adjuncts now hurl the most unconscionable insults at people for speaking up for the values of half the country. They first used the slander “racist,” which then morphed into “white supremacist,” and now they are escalating to “pro-lynching.”

Jason Aldean’s Video Accused of Pro-Lynching Stance Sparks Call for CMT Boycott [NBC News – 7/21/2023]

In Aldean's video, the country singer and his band perform in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, the same site where 18-year-old Henry Choate was lynched in 1927 after he was accused of assaulting a white 16-year-old girl.

The header picture is the Maury County courthouse. It’s a beautiful old building close to Nashville, which is why it’s been the setting for many film shoots, including a Lifetime Original movie (“Steppin’ into the Holiday”) with Mario Lopez and Jana Kramer, “A Nashville Country Christmas” with Tanya Tucker, and the Hannah Montana movie, among others. Are Mario Lopez and Miley Cyrus also “pro-lynching?” Where was the outrage for their use of this courthouse? There was none, of course, because there is nothing inappropriate about using this old building in a film shoot.

Also please note that the American flag draped on the courthouse is not the flag that was being waved by Democrat nightriders a century ago.

In case anyone who supports Aldean also thinks it’s regrettable that he chose this courthouse, thus providing ammunition to the cancel culture warriors in the media, it would make no difference. They determined that Aldean needed to be canceled, and then they went searching for a reason to call him racist. His opposition to urban riots alone was enough for them to call him racist.

A similar example of something from long ago being dredged up for a current smear is how the “The Eyes of Texas,” the University of Texas’ alma mater, was suddenly deemed racist in the tumultuous summer of 2020. Although the song doesn’t have a racist word or concept in it, the media achieved full cancellation frenzy in short time when it was revealed that the song had been performed at a minstrel show more than 115 years earlier. (“Texas to Keep School Song with Roots in Blackface Minstrel Shows” Washington Post – 7/14/2020))

Or how about Trump speeches? Do you remember how often the media called Trump rallies racist and problematic simply because he dared to speak in a particular city. Here is just one headline from 2020: In Tulsa, Fears that Trump Rally May Worsen Racial Unrest, Spread of Coronavirus [Reuters – 6/17/2020]

Why on earth would the President of the United States speaking to a crowd of supporters in Oklahoma’s second largest city during a presidential campaign be racially problematic? Well according to the media, Trump had no business speaking in a city that had a race riot 99 years prior, especially since Trump’s speech was just a month after the George Floyd riots.

Essentially, the media wanted to keep Trump from campaigning in the Covid election of 2020, and if he did campaign they would call him racist. It didn’t matter if it was Tulsa or Trenton, he was going to be called racist if he dared to hit the campaign trail.

Jason Aldean could have done the live performance for his “Try That in a Small Town” video in his own front yard, and the media would still have called that imagery racist, if for no other reason than that his property is located in a state/city/county/etc where something bad happened at some time in the past.

Let me give you an example of the how the media’s “find the racism” game works, and how it is not possible for their target to produce a product that can’t be labeled racist. As a random subject, I decided to use another video that was recently filmed in Tennessee. This one is a commercial created for Ford Motor Company and Bang & Olufsen which was filmed in and around Chattanooga. It generated much civic pride for how it showcased Chattanooga’s striking downtown, with its magnificent bridges crossing the Tennessee River. The rugged country outside of town was also featured.

Here is the commercial. Below it I will play “find the racism.”

Let me stress, there is nothing racist about this advertisement, either intentionally or inadvertently. Neither Ford nor B&O had any racist intent, nor did they produce a racist commercial. The point I am trying to make is that the race warriors going after Aldean could find “shocking” racism anywhere they wanted, and I am using this commercial as an example.

Let me now write as a race-baiting journalist reviewing this video and seeking out racism where there is none. I will use “AutoCo” in lieu of any actual company name.

Let’s look at some of the imagery in the video. Here we see an AutoCo vehicle parked beside a human-made lake, which dams up the Tennessee River. Beneath the surface of this lake are lands where Cherokee once hunted, fished, and lived. In fact, the former Cherokee capital of Tanasi, for which the state and river were named, lies submerged beneath an East Tennessee lake not far from where this picture was taken. AutoCo may find this submerged Cherokee landscape idyllic, but it is an obvious insult to those whose ancestors once made a life on this land…land which has been forever drowned.

We also see the vehicle being taken off-road through the woods and mountains outside of Chattanooga, the same woods and mountains through which the natives of this land were cruelly expelled. What animus and bigotry caused AutoCo to mock the Trail of Tears by showing its vehicle driving over the same rugged paths that a proud people once trod on their cruel relocation from this area?

And then we see…wait…you have got to be kidding…we see a black man running with the Walnut Street Bridge as a backdrop. THE Walnut Street Bridge! The bridge on which a heinous lynching of a black man was perpetrated in 1906.

Oh my, it gets even worse. The narrator and the script now read “blood pumping in my ears” as the black man runs in front of the notorious bridge.

”Blood pumping in my ears?!!” Are they trying to describe the physical reaction when a body is hanged?! The pro-lynching sentiment of this commercial isn’t even subtle, is it?

AutoCo has created what is clearly an intentional dog whistle that lends support to both the cruelty of the Trail of Tears and the ghastly practice of lynching.

Again, my criticism is a parody. There is nothing racist, or insensitive, or inappropriate about this ad. It was widely praised and well received. No one ever thought to find racist imagery in it, because there is none.

But the vicious racism I pretended to document in this commercial is exactly what the media has done to Jason Aldean, and to Donald Trump, and to anyone else the left-wing establishment seeks to harm by slandering them as racist-by-association with long ago events.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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