"Aw shucks, listen to that song; watch that video," said I to myself after Gov. Kim Reynolds tweeted, "a good day to play some Jason Aldean" a while back.
The song is "Try That in a Small Town." I'll spare you a link and transcribed lyrics. Both are easy to find online.
Mr. Aldean (not on my play list) favors cowboy drag as most country performers do. He has a pleasant voice; the song moves right along.
Took me back a ways to the days just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the ways country musicians reacted to that disaster. There was Alan Jackson's gentle and contemplative "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)?" And then Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue."
The latter was whup-your-ass country, as is Mr. Aldean's paean to his imagined version of small-town America.
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Some have charged that the Aldean song is racist, but that's a stretch.
As far as the music video is concerned, however, whoever had the bright idea of staging it in front of a Tennessee courthouse where a Black teenager was lynched in 1927 deserves a whupping. That, combined with mob violence footage, is incendiary.
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Small town is a relative designation; Mr. Aldean grew up in Macon, Georgia, a city (in Iowa terms) of 150,000. I live in Chariton, Iowa, a town of about 4,200.
Residents of both, I'm sure, do look with horror sometimes at the goings on in larger places. But then folks who live in larger places sometimes look with horror at what goes on in small towns.
Matthew Shepard, for example, was just trying to live his best small-town life back in October of 1998 when he was kidnapped and killed in Laramie, Wyoming (population 32,000).
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The curious thing about that music video --- many of the images are of large-scale mob violence of a sort highly unlikely in a small town and only occasional is some larger places.
The imagery really doesn't relate to the lyrics, however --- focused as they are on individual acts of violence: a sucker punch, a carjacking, an armed robbery, disrespect for police officers, disrespect for the U.S. flag.
All of the individual acts are possible and do happen with some regularity in places both large and small. So it's the video that is a major player in creation here of a false dichotomy --- either-or, this or that, small town is good, big town is bad.
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Small towns have miseries of their own. Shortly before the Aldean music video was released, for example, our former long-time police chief was arrested on multiple drug charges --- possession and trafficking --- plus interference with official acts and child endangerment.
Drug trafficking is far more of a problem in small towns than any of the crimes or acts of violence featured in the Aldean song.
On the other hand, the last time protesters took to the streets here was back in pandemic days when anti-vaxers and a physician with alternate therapies to market organized and waved a few flags politely at passing motorists on Court Avenue.
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Mr. Aldean's lyrics seem to suggest that his version of small-town values, if imposed --- with Grandpa's gun, perhaps --- might offer some sort of hope for the future.
But small-town values --- neighborliness, for example --- are human values, not small-town specific; and always in danger of fraying.
And small towns are fraying --- as those of us who actually live in them know. And we don't know what to do about that.
Mr. Aldean will perform at the Iowa State Fair on August 20 and will attract a huge and enthusiastic crowd.
If you've been following the news lately you'll know that Iowans, under the leadership of Governor Reynolds and others, have been engaged lately in attempts to recreate an imaginary small-town past for the state.
A whup-your-ass country song drawing clear lines between small-town good and big-town bad is sure to be a hit.
The thing is --- it's just not useful as the conversation continues about how best to go forward as neighbors, small-town and big-town alike, in a world where population will continue to diversify and grow younger and "traditional" values will be adapted or discarded.
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