For DLs who love country music: What do you do when a beloved country star is revealed to be….?

Hillbilly.

Basically, the same feeling as when you find out Bill Clinton raped his way across Arkansas.

Which is to say: check their politics. Do they vote Dem?

That's all that really matters.

[quote]Basically, the same feeling as when you find out Bill Clinton raped his way across Arkansas.

But what happens when you discover that the things you hear about country music stars are actually true?

[quote]Now being a Republican isn’t a sin

It's 2022. Look at the Republican party. You think any decent person wants to identify with that? It's the party of grift, dishonesty, and a kind of political sadism that gets satisfaction inflicting suffering on the people they disadvantage. There's something terribly unhealthy in a person who embraces that.

All it means is that you have discovered country stars are no different than anyone else in the entertainment biz.

They sleep around/sleep with minors, take drugs, hold unpopular political views. They're no better than rock stars or Hollywood celebs, because they're part of the same entertainment machine.

Johnny Cash not only cheated on his wives, embezzled from his band members' retirement funds, and took drugs, he burned down a good-sized part of a national forest, killing a number of endangered birds in the process. And everyone thinks of Johnny as one of the good guys.

Carrie Underwood is a COVID denying anti-masker and anti-vaxxer I hear.

And famous 60s-era country producer Billy Sherrill was a outspoken Nazi lover.

The only country music I like is the old time stuff from way back in the heyday of the genre. It's too much phony religion mixed into it now, but out of the list the OP sited one thing really stands apart from the rest. It's the guy who boasts about never having read a book since college. This is the problem we have today in a society where a large segment believes the less they know the better. The other thing is it's really well past time to get over the Confederate flag worship.

R7 Read or listen to this podcast. Billy Sherrill was not a Nazi.

This blew my mind

R2 ignored the much larger number of women who claim they were abused by Donald Trump....

With George Jones, he was a massive alcoholic and drug addict, known for wild and crazy antics, I doubt he knew or cared what Wallace was saying. He was just looking for a paycheck he could turn into booze, pills or cocaine. Tammy wasn't much better. I judge people by the time and culture in which they were raised and lived, not by the values of today. George was known to be friends with and to champion Charlie Pride's position in the industry, which doesn't seem like a hard-core racist. Also, his recording of "Patches" with B.B. King for the album Rhythm, Country and Blues is a fucking masterpiece.

Focus on the music.

I adore Loretta Lynn's music but now she's probably in love with Trump. I think Hank jr is one of the greatest singers in country music history; yet he's also a nutjob.

R12 although you make an excellent point I respectfully disagree with the time and place argument. Whether Tammy and George were addicts, and both improved their thinking with actions, at no time is racist or bigoted thinking to be excused because ‘’ that’s way it was” argument. Because now we don’t say “ nigger” or “ wetback” doesn’t mean a) that we know better, or b) the culture we live in isn’t still motivated by bigotry and hate. The only difference between then and now is what we say out loud. You can’t excuse bigotry at anytime. That is like apologizing for the old racist uncle you have who doesn’t know because better he grew up in a different time. At no time is it understandable. Ignorance and hate don’t expire like milk. That thinking is the reason people don’t understand bigotry today. Defining people’s thoughts because time doom those thoughts to repeating.

R14 I disagree if you are raised in a racist environment without much education it doesn’t excuse your actions but it does mitigate them. It is like saying all slaveowners throughout history were automatically evil. While we now disagree with their actions they were engaged in something that was just an accepted way of life. Let’s say that in a hundred years owning pets is outlawed and seen as evil, should all pet owners throughout history then be condemned for doing something that was normal and accepted for centuries before them? No, we should judge them based upon what the prevailing views were at the time they engaged in the action. If you judge the past solely by the values of today all of history is lacking, no person from any race or continent would be able to escape condemnation.

R15 Owning slaves- another human being is never right. You don’t need an education for that knowledge. No one would excuse the slavery that happens in the world today. The slavery that existed in America was based on race and a Philosophy that claimed black people by mere color were inferior supported by an inferior book that was self-translated. I don’t think owning a pet is the same thing. Most people don’t use pets for hard labor or rape them. That is a false equivalent.

Slave ownership is an evil no matter who that slave is. Time doesn’t offer anything but a deep rationalization. Based on your example we should see the Nazis actions were an acceptable way of life in the thirties in Germany. That manner of thinking only tries to soften the attack against truly unacceptable behavior. Should we say that everyone who harmed gays over time weren’t evil. They were just caught in history. Right is right and wrong is wrong no matter what century you live. Cowards who couldn’t stay up in their times aren’t to be forgiven.

From the book "Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen" by Jimmy McDonough:

On June 12, 1972, ten thousand people would flock to Old Plantation park to attend a fund-raiser for George Wallace, who’d just survived an assassination attempt a few weeks before in Laurel, Maryland, that left him crippled for life. Wallace was Wynette’s kind of guy: powerful, oddly charismatic, with something dark and foreboding pulsating just below the surface. “I like a man that speaks out the way he does,” she told a Tupelo paper in 1973. “He’s a really fine man.” As far as the rest of it, well, “this business with the black people has been exaggerated."

The Lakeland concert featured Del Reeves and Ferlin Husky in addition to George and Tammy, who’d been on the road with Wallace just days before he was shot.

As far as civil rights went, Wynette wasn’t too interested. “It was like the way it was in the South when I grew up: black people did their thing, white people did their thing, and, yeah, if a white person mistreated a black person, that was not good—but you’d better believe you’re not bringin’ somebody home for dinner,” said Joan Dew. “There wasn’t gonna be a black guy in her band, nor would there be a black boyfriend, no matter how much she loved Charley Pride. That was the way Tammy was raised, and she never looked beyond that.”

(Joan Dew was Wynette's friend and author of Wynette's autobiography "Stand By Your Man".)

[quote]Johnny Cash not only cheated on his wives, embezzled from his band members' retirement funds, and took drugs, he burned down a good-sized part of a national forest, killing a number of endangered birds in the process.

The forest fire wasn't intentional, drug use doesn't make someone a "bad guy," and we don't know if he embezzled from the retirement funds.

What happened is when Luther Perkins died, they discovered the retirement funds Cash had set aside were missing. Cash blamed another band member Marshal Grant, whose funds were also missing. Perkins' family and Grant sued Cash, it was all settled out of court, but Grant went back to performing with Cash and said there were no hard feelings.

R16 You can say that now, but if you were raised in a time when it was just an accepted part of life that everyone was like that is just what happens and has been happening for centuries, you might have a different view of it. They actually used to throw people in mental institutions for questioning slavery or advocating women's suffrage because to do so just seemed crazy to other people. To them that was like questioning why a cats lick themselves, it was just the natural order of things. Thankfully people did the hard work and changed things but the average person just accepted that was the way things were.

[quote] [R16] You can say that now, but if you were raised in a time when it was just an accepted part of life that everyone was like that is just what happens and has been happening for centuries, you might have a different view of it. They actually used to throw people in mental institutions for questioning slavery or advocating women's suffrage because to do so just seemed crazy to other people. To them that was like questioning why a cats lick themselves, it was just the natural order of things. Thankfully people did the hard work and changed things but the average person just accepted that was the way things were.

People evolve past their environments and upbringings when and where it suits their own personal needs.

That's too bad to hear about Tammy Wynette. I used to like her music but I won't be listening to a song of hers again.