Darn it Jay Tea, You made me go over there! I just got my sight back from poking my eyes out with a rusty spoon from the last time.

Where is that spoon anyway?

Hmmm.

Frankly, as an immigrant myself among many that I know, I don't know of a single immigrant that is in favor of this proposed amnesty program. Really so what if they go to the end of the line? They're already in America while everyone else who is on the list has to remain in their home countries. During this period the illegals will gain more income, more job skills, more opportunities while legal applicants get the smelly end of the stick.

Uh, that ain't country music.

B Moe, I'm pretty sure the YouTube version is a remix of some sort. The beat doesn't sound like the original. In fact, I'm sure of it.

If you're going to keep calling me Soros' "butt boy", please tell him to make the checks out to O-l-i-v-e-r W-i-l-l-i-s. Because my rent ain't paying itself.

(I think it's funny that you think its such a scandal that I would agree with my employer's political viewpoint. It isn't like the Media Research Center is hiring people like me, heck you'd probably not be right-wing enough for them)

Oliver, if I did work for some organization like the MRC, I'd be DAMNED sure to put up a firewall between my work and my blogging. I would NOT post from work, I would NOT cite their publications, and I would do everything I could to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Because, Oliver, that's what ethical people do.

J.

I'm not sure what this aversion to be being paid to blog is. Who wouldn't want to get paid for something they'd do anyway for free?
My main site lives purely off whatever (trivial) amount of advertising it gets but I'm paid to blog at a couple of other places, just like I'm paid to write at a few more.

What's the problem?

back to the Trace Adkins thing....

In one vein, it's not at all country, but you also must remember that for the past 40 years, "country" has encompassed a lot of different sounds. There were songs in the 60s and 70s that truly enraged "true" country fans because of the subject matter and sometimes the sounds that seemed to come directly from that "evil" Rock and Roll music.

No, it's not steel guitars and fiddles, but it has a decidedly country "mood" and it's done by a solid country artist. I have a lot more trouble seeing Shania Twain as country than I do this song. I'm not a huge fan of the song, nor of some of the newer country that seems more concerned with mass market appeal than with the music, but I don't argue that it's not "country" but rather just not good music.

And just to throw one more little interesting detail into the mix, this little tune that's getting so much recognition all over the U.S. was written by a guy living just down the road (about 15 mins) from me right here in VERY rural central Mississippi. I went to school with him and his older sister, and his baby sister dated my son for a good while.

I guess the song fits the country marketing label, it just doesn't fit the traditional definition of country as a ethnic/cultural music type. As for the video, that is definitely science-fiction.

In one vein, it's not at all country, but you also must remember that for the past 40 years, "country" has encompassed a lot of different sounds.

This is indeed true, but I think the complaints the fans of more "traditional" country have, were valid back then and are now, too...namely, that the sounds that are arguably the essence of the genre are getting marginalized in favor of the more contemporary sound with its wider appeal. Many people would indeed think that the song "Murder on Music Row" was a dramatic overstatement of traditional country fans' sentiments, and country music's state at the time, but around the time George Strait and Alan Jackson recorded it, I thought it was more than a little difficult to dispute, coming as it did when country-in-name-only people like Shania Twain and Faith Hill were having some of their greatest success and Nashville started trying to capitalize on the boy-band fad (Rascal Flatts and Emerson Drive, anyone?) And even though I am a huge George Strait fan, I was a bit disappointed in his comment that it was recorded as a joke (right after it won the CMA award for Musical Event of the Year in 2000). I seem to recall him issuing a statement through his publicist saying that he spoke too soon, that he didn't really mean he recorded the song as a joke. I don't necessarily have any problem with more contemporary stuff (I thought Faith Hill's Faith cd was probably the best she recorded), but sometimes it seems to me that the more rootsy sound of country is its Rodney Dangerfield, though I know its popularity cycles up and down regularly and has through its history. But that's just my $0.02...

That just makes no sense. Out of deference to people like yourselves who would call me all sorts of names anyway, I shouldn't use the piles of research I'm familiar with to make a point? Please. That's just silly.

Hmmm.

There was no country music after Hee Haw was canceled.

*sob*