Jason Aldean should have known better

Listen, there's just something about a self-righteous bonfire that draws the eye, doesn't it? I suspect when country singer Jason Aldean released his song "Try That in a Small Town" back in May and fans judged it just all right his people knew they had to juice that puppy and boy howdy one thing about that pack, they run tight and they know their base. Stick to the playbook. And so they did, and here this week they've set themselves ablaze on their own pyre of smirking ire for being canceled by the "woke media" because we're just so danged sensitive and whatnot. It's enough to give one a hankering for s'mores. Now let's get one thing straight: By Aldean's "people" or "base," I don't mean country music. Just like America or politics or democracy, everything is splintering in definition. Country music ain't nothing but three chords and the truth, said songwriting legend Harlan Howard back in the '50s, and as a writer I take another's expressions of speech seriously before I take up arms against it. So when Aldean's song rubbed my friend Linda the wrong way, I knew something wasn't right. I knew she liked his music. She schooled me. The lyrics to the song — which aren't credited to him — pugnaciously invite anyone to start a fight in a small town and see how it works out for ya. Yes, ya. "Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk/carjack an old lady at a red light/pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store" starts it off. Try that in a small town, he spits out, and "see how far ya make it down the road." Look, nobody cares about this. Invoking violence in lyrics is nothing new in music, country or not. That's not what the hue and cry is all about. It was the video that was just released that did the trick, see. It's a melange of clips of seemingly chaotic images — many of which don't appear to be taken in America, and don't appear to be news footage of anything at all — edited to appear as frightening images of violence in urban centers. Spliced in are images of Aldean, squinting into his microphone, singing in front of a dramatically lit up courthouse draped with an American flag behind him. He promises more: "Cuss out a cop/spit in his face/stomp on the flag and light it up/yeah, ya think you're tough/well try that in a small town/see how far ya make it down the road/Around here we take care of our own." Here's where it gets all kinds of weird. That courthouse he's singing in front of is in Maury County, Tennessee, where in 1927 a white mob lynched 18-year-old Henry Choate, hanging him from the balcony. It's in the town of Columbia, where in 1946 an infamous race riot ended in the near-lynching of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. That bit gets so hard to swallow past while Aldean is crooning away: "Try that in a small town … full of good ol' boys, raised up right." Doesn't it? If I, given an internet connection and an afternoon, can find that, surely Aldean — a very famous, media-dependent superstar with a team of people whose living depends on manipulating an image, playing to the crowd, crafting and curating every little thing they peddle out there on the web — knows all about that courthouse's history. That town's history. Odd that he'd sing a song so raucously up-with-vigilante-spirit there of all places, right? Aldean took to Twitter right after Country Music Television said it was taking the video off the air because of criticism the video promoted violence and hatred and said people were accusing him of making a "pro-lynching" video. He said he just wanted to evoke the spirit of community that took care of each other, above any differences, like he had growing up. Which is weird, given the implied threats in the lyrics. But then, he didn't write the song, and despite that whole small-town gibberish, he doesn't come from a small town, so I guess we can't fault a fellow for what he doesn't know. I do live in a small town, and the kind of things Aldean and his promised band of "good ol' boys raised right" don't give me peace of mind. Round up your boys and chase me down the road for stomping a flag? Cussing a cop? I'm all for civility, boys, but you know those aren't crimes, right? Upheld by the Supreme Court, expressing contempt for police officers is protected speech under the First Amendment, my very favorite of the amendments. "Our 'senses cannot be shocked' by speech which is non-threatening verbal abuse," is the way Vermilion Police Chief Chris Hartung explained it to me. He admits "it's not a great recruitment perk." Maybe we ought to discuss what "raised right" means, hoss. Aldean, who was on stage in 2017 in Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire and killed 58 people at the Route 91 Festival, said going through that makes him not want any more "senseless headlines or see any more families ripped apart." Huh. Seems headlines is all he is gunning for. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.