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COUNTRY MUSICIANS CAN’T BE DEMOCRATS!:

Here are the Red State Update guys talking about Toby Keith being a Democrat:

It might be useful for starting a discussion about the way country music is so associated with conservative politics and the Republican party today, and why we would be surprised that a guy like Toby Keith (who has proudly acknowledged smoking pot-liberal!-but also wrote the song ‘Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue’-conservative!) would be a Democrat-what does that say about our ideas of what a Democrat (or Republican) must be or act like? You might contrast that with the number of country artists in the first half of the 20th century who were often progressive Democrats or (gasp!) even socialists. It’s pretty fascinating how much the politics associated with country music have changed, and how ‘obvious’ it seems to people today that country musicians would be conservative, to the point that country music has in many ways become a symbol of conservatism (as opposed to ‘alt country,’ which is often associated with a more liberal outlook*).

For an excellent discussion of the early political culture of the California country music scene, see Pete LaChapelle’s book Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California.

(Via Sociological Images.)