Toby Keith - Advocate of lynching?

[Alex]

I have no idea what is in the video (can't watch it from where I am).

But to me the lyrics presented, with their talk of mounting up horses is (despite the screwed up chronology of it being his grandfather) a call back not to the racial lynching but the mystique of the frontier west, its instant justice, and the posse protecting the homesteads.

Also, the lyrics to me don't feel so much like a literal call for the return of posses and lynching but rather to an idea that punishment has become soft and so removed from the action that it is ineffective. That we need to firm up and return an idea of swiftness and sternness to our system of justice.

That's how I'd read it anyway. However, can a man working in a musical genre most closely associated with white Southerners expect to reference vigilante hanging in any connection at all with modern poverty driven crime without someone eventually making a racial lynching connection? No, I wouldn't say so.

That doesn't mean it was his intent, but it isn't an unreasonable reading of it either.

[BarTopDancer]

Is that song from Pineapple Express promoting terrorism?

[Alex]

Probably. The movie certainly does.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

The title song? What lyrics suggest that?

But surely you can see how a song idealizing a time when people where punished by hanging them from trees could be - with benefit of doubt here - misconstrued?

[Alex]

By the way, my last post was not particularly serious. Pineapple Express does not directly advocate for terrorism. Being soundtrack clueless I have no idea what song is in question.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Oh, I figured - you posted after I started typing but before I actually posted. I was replying directly to BTD because I really AM curious about what she means.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by LSPoorEeyorick

The title song? What lyrics suggest that?

I don't know what song and I have no desire to see the movie. I keep hearing Kevin and Bean talk about some song from the movie (maybe it's by MIA) that supposedly promotes terrorism with lyrics about blowing up buses.

But surely you can see how a song idealizing a time when people where punished by hanging them from trees could be - with benefit of doubt here - misconstrued?

No, really I can't. I think people are reading way to much into this song. It's a story being told from father to son then grandfather to son. They talk about how justice was done in their day, how criminals are getting away with so much these days and the law needs to straighten up and start doing better. No where does it say go out and hang your [black] neighbor. Back in the day, that is what was done. Not go do it now. History is history. We're lucky that CA doesn't have such a turbulent or racially charged history like states in the South.

[Strangler Lewis]

It's only a story worth telling if it has useful truths, i.e., that "back in the day" they did it right, and we do it wrong. I also think that since Toby Keith and the other doofus wear Guardian Angels berets and that it directs its focus to gangsters in the streets that the song ultimately yearns for vigilantes who rid the streets of minority criminals.

Finally, it struck me that as he was driven off, the serial killer with the middle eastern features cast a longing look at the doofus decoy in drag, suggesting to me that he was killing hookers to compensate for the fact that he was gay. And that was the worst fight scene I've seen in some time.

[BarTopDancer]

I'll have to watch the video when I get home - but I seem to recall the grandfather wanting to pass his ways down to the father and grandson but the father said no and took away the gun.

Those same truths can be useful in what not to do.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Regardless of what the video says, these lyrics really bother me: "Find a tall oak tree/round up all of them bad boys/Hang them high in the street/For all the people to see." I definitely think the reminiscing grandfather is implying that it was the better way to do things. I definitely think it's not.