Zealots In A Small Town

by Tom Smith

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about

I'll be blunt: I don't expect a lot of you to listen to this one over and over. But I had to do it. A fairly generic country singer named Jason Aldean recorded a fairly generic country song called "Try That In A Small Town". Unfortunately, no matter how he tries to defend it, it's a paean to being ignorantly racist and angrily violent. It was filmed at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, TN, where a Black man, Henry Choate, was lynched by a white mob in 1927. It has lots of clips of people rioting, intending to evoke antifa and Black Lives Matter protests, while the song says what'll happen to those protesters if they come to a small town.

In other words, it's racist AF.

So I couldn't leave it alone.

A small glossary of terminology:
DEI -- diversity, equity, inclusion
ESG -- environmental, social, governance (a framework used to assess an organization's business practices and performances on various sustainability and ethical issues); some right-wing politicians have spoken out or even made laws against factoring in its effects when governing
CRT -- critical race theory (the idea that there are systemic disadvantages to being a non-white person in the United States, and maybe something should be done about that)

lyrics

Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Sounds like Corbin or Dalton on a Saturday night

Cuss out a cop, spit in his face,
I can do it ‘cause I'm white
But you better know your place

We’re zealots in a small town
See how far you can make it through town,
Around here, we're not very bright
And if your accent's funny or your skin is brown
You might not make it through the night
We’re zealots in a small town

Got a gun that my granddad gave me
Almost shot my sister when I was eight
You can pry it from my cold, dead 2nd Amendment

We’re zealots in a small town
You want abortions and don't want guns
Your books and drag shows are obscene
You got DEI, ESG, and CRT
I don't even know what they mean*
We’re zealots in a small town

Full of good ol’ boys, raised far right,
And we'll beat your woke ass out of spite
We’re zealots in a small town
No socialism in a small town
We’re zealots in a small town

(Matthew Shepard

I didn't write this song, but I approve
So do lots o’ small towns down south
Boring country groove
And my racist mouth
We’re zealots in a small town
Sandy Hook is a small town
Uvalde’s a small town...

credits

released August 4, 2023
Songwriters: Kelley Lovelace / Neil Thrasher / Tully Kennedy / Kurt Michael Allison

Image from Wikimedia: "The Lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson, 25 May 1911"

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about

Tom Smith Ann Arbor

Weird Al with more books, JoCo with more jokes, Carlin with more Cthulhu. Since 1985, Tom Smith has been breaking hearts, minds, and laws of propriety and physics with his insane blend of sf/fantasy, Life With Computers, pop culture, politics, and puns. More than twenty albums later, he maintains the best is yet to come. ... more