Yes! Virginia is an interesting state that way. The ultra-woke precincts of Charlottesville-Albemarle County surrounded by red-state counties as well as the DC suburban blob expanding into the Commonwealth are a laboratory for how Americans in general might learn to get along, or not, in the near future.
Yeah most of the independent cities are blue & the counties around them red with some notable exceptions (Albemarle, Montgomery, some of Southside & the Penninsula). I live in Rockingham County which goes 70% R in elections while the City of Harrisonburg goes 60% D. I haven’t detected much city/county animosity. It’s more of both being annoyed with hard partying JMU students. The same town vs gown stuff from time out of mind. One of my kids lives in Arlington. Some people think it’s not “the real Virginia” but it’s just as much so as Hampton Roads with all the military bases & government installations. Or the suburban counties around Richmond. Thanks to Rod for the info on Oliver Anthony. I don’t like pop country either but he, like Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, & Hank Williams (Sr. & Jr.) is the real deal.
That was my thought. My kid has a really hard time with expressing himself and sometimes you can’t tell if he is being serious or joking around.
My husband is so afraid of a situation like this happening because of overzealous cops not being able to understand my kid when he talks. He speaks more clearly than he did when he started speech therapy, but he may never speak perfectly clear.
A lot of autistic people just state facts and it’s really a neutral statement, not judging one way or the other.
IMO the British TV show Doc Martin is entertaining nonsense. We have a doctor who cannot stand the sight of blood. We also have a village bobby who in his blend of idealism and naivety is the complete opposite of these mean heartless LEOs who seem to be running and ruining British life. You have to wonder if it is all a deliberate distraction.
You know, some commenters in these boxes like to take the line that Constitution is a dead letter and how long does Ron Paul lasagne last in the freeze dry? But the U.K. story reinforces the injunction to get down on your knees and thank God for having created George Mason. "Homophobic public order offense"! It's going to be some time before we sink that low.
Its a blessing to discover Oliver Anthony the same week we lost the estimable Robbie Robertson. "Rich men north of Richmond" is the kind of perfect little turn of phrase that we would expect from Robertson.
Exactly. I’ve seen reports of too many incidents where a perfectly reasonable explanation is ready to hand, but the cops refuse even to hear it. Reports of black men who themselves called the police for assistance, only to be mistaken for the perpetrator and detained, despite neighbors’ pleas supporting the man detained. It’s part of a wider phenomenon in which fewer and fewer people seem capable of the least mental humility that tells them to pause and consider whether their first impressions might not be mistaken. I’m not talking about cops making split second decisions in an active scenario, but about episodes where it is entirely possible to just listen and put two and two together. The same phenomenon leads ignorant and impatient people to denounce those who misspeak or use unfamiliar words and phrases.
Thanks for sharing about Oliver Anthony. I listen to a lot of "alternative" country music. Most stuff coming out of Nashville and played on the radio is trite garbage. There is some authentic stuff coming out of western Canada, the mountain west and rural areas of Appalachia.
Charles Wesley Goodwin out WV and Colby Acuff out of ID are two of my favorites. Acuff's "If I Were the Devil" is a great commentary on the current state of things. Goodwin's new album "Family Ties" has some good songs as well.
Too many of the good Brits are dead, “strewn on the fields of Belgium and France.” Their progeny are largely depopulating despite copulating, more worried about crap as shown here when they should worry about their sending ridiculous support for Ukraine, pushing for more war on behalf of uncle sam, bashing and arresting Christians, ... A disintegrating mass of what could have been good. We are running neck and neck with them on this road to perdition.
Hat tip for the Children’s Crusade reference in support of a good point. I myself have wondered how the land of my ancestors has lost so much steel out of its spine that it’s reduced to tolerating what the video shows. England, indeed, “is not the mythical land of Madame George and her roses.”
Hold on, please. We will see what folk in the UK do about this. In my view, things have gone downhill there, but not so much as to generally accept this. The incident, which should never have happened, is being investigated.
I think the UK is wrong to have laws censoring speech, but it is obvious the girl did not even break the law. Let's see if the investigation condemns the actions of the police. I believe it is likely to do so. We shall see.
Well...having spent some years in the UK....and the Brits being asleep now....
UK folk meant to be kind by forbidding homophobic remarks.
Yes, yes, I agree there should be free speech even if feelings are hurt are even if people, even gay young people, feel awful when they hear the remark. It is wrong to make an actual homophobic slur, but the old saying about "you can't legislate morality" applies here. That is not understood in British culture which puts far more emphasis than the USA does on polite expression. - Not agreeing with the law, just explaining. It is not "wicked" people who made it. It is well-intentioned misguided people.
This is not about the best dying on Flander's field. People of every type went to WW1, not just the "good" ones. The "bad" ones did not get to refuse to fight. In fact, what of the rare ones who did not fight? Those choosing ambulance service because they were pacifists and COs, and facing pretty strong persecution after the war, were probably very gooe people!
These are abusive cops who show no understanding of autism enforcing the law in a way they should not.
Yes, it is about totalitarianism - trying to control thoughts - in this case about homosexuals by forbidding any negative expression. In this video we can't even call it "soft" totalitarianism - this is "hard".
Brits are not perfect but they are still a people I love.
Thanks Bailey of the Ilk. I love Britain and things British/English; I yearn for their salvation as a just and peaceful place as I do for my own land (Tolkien’s perspective on one’s motherland vs an empire). But, methinks that ain’t in the cards. For some sanity, watch Fr. Spyridon (also a Bailey btw) before You Tube knocks him off.
Thanks for the link. That guy is great. I’d call it Americana, which is a meeting place of the music of poor white folk with the music of poor black folk. He’d better be careful though. The Nashville machine loves a rebel they think they can control. He reminds me a bit of Steve Earle who had a good run in Nashville in the 80s before his heroin use became more important than his guitar and he landed in jail. He’s been making music again since the mid 90s but he’s not the same man.
You can start pushing back on the kind of totalitarianism exhibited by the ridiculous Brit "hate" crime laws by rejecting the perversion of language these types of laws rely on. Homophobia, especially in the context of an autistic teenager being "homophobic" by making the remark she made, isn't actually a thing. It's a made up word to shame people who don't morally agree with the LGBT agenda, by framing that opposition as a 'phobia', or form of mental illness. The implication is, "Of course you should accept [fill in the LGBT blank]; not accepting it is a mental sickness, a literal *phobia*!"
Time to call bull$#!t and reclaim language. Per wikipedia's first line in the phobia entry: "A phobia is an anxiety disorder, defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation." This does not mean what the Left thinks it means. People who oppose the LGBT movement suffer no debilitating anxiety or excessive fear of LGBT individuals. Unless the Left is willing to self-diagnose as having "fetusphobia", "Christophobia", "heterophobia", and "caucasiaphobia", they really ought to stop inventing ridiculous terminology for people who simply don't like their political agenda, and the rest of us should start refusing to acquiesce when they do.
I think it was the Soviets who came up with the idea of labelling political dissenters as mentally ill, but it crossed the pond with Adorno's "Authoritarian Personality", which is about as scientific as astrology. (The Critical "Theorists" had tremendous science envy and also knew that their political program would go down smoother coated with a patina of pseudoscience.)
But the basic premise is the same: anyone still clinging to god, country and family instead of dedicating their lives to the Socialist Revolution is obviously twisted and dangerous, a potential fascist ready to start a genocide at any moment.
Just think: we rescued the Frankfurt School aristocrats from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, gave them and their families safe and prosperous lives, and in return they denounced the entire country as intolerant!
But the Left will never relinquish the pathologization of dissent as a weapon, it's on a 100-yr winning streak.
My heritage is from East Tennessee. I like bluegrass music, that is, mountain music. I generally do not like country music.
I think Oliver Anthony is singing mountain music. He is influenced by country, I hear that. But I mainly hear bluegrass. The vocal delivery style, the picking style. This is not country - it is bluegrass, I think.
I don't guarantee that I am right, but I think I am. Yes, I know, he lives in Farmville, Virginia. This is in the county where my earliest known Arnold ancestor lived, 1736 until his death in 1777. It is not "the mountains". But I still think this is mountain music. At least more than half mountain music.
edit to add this: Can we at least agree this is "folk music", not country? (Bluegrass and mountain are folk of a type, but if this is a different type of folk, so be it.)
I looked it up. William Arnold's land was 14 miles NNW of Farmville. Oliver Anthony is on 90 acres "in" Farmville, but of course not in town. Wouldn't it be cool if he was on the old Arnold land, now his land.
There is also this, which I thought was a not-unfair article on Anthony in Rolling Stone:
Country, folk, and bluegrass have so intertwined over the years that it's not always easy to place artists in strict categories. Lots of this stuff simply overlaps.
Indeed! I agree. However, I do bristle a bit to hear Anthony called "country". In my heritage group, we do not refer to bluegrass and mountain music as "country". :)
Genres have overlap, but an artist is usually identified by one genre or another. So that is my bug-a-boo with saying Anthony is "country". Nashville and Knoxville are really very different.
(Sorta like some feel the north of England could be its own country, with so much difference form the south.)
Right. It's an unfortunate thing that any music that's Southern/Western/mountain/old-timey has come to be put under the "country" umbrella. The latter term has become a somewhat useless broad handle for anything that has a twang.
I'm old enough to remember when bands like Poco and The Eagles were considered "country rock." Yet in 1980 I had a college roomate from Mississippi who was a bluegrass banjo player and he had never even heard the term "country rock." When I first mentioned it to him he laughed and thought I was joking.
I also remember when REM's first music came out that a lot of people who liked new wave and what's now called "post-punk" didn't really get them because they sounded too "country."
Interesting. I didn't know a lot about REM but looked them up after your post. The mandolin in "Losing My Religion" - is it also in their early music? Coud it be the old bluegrass= country thing, with "mandolin = bluegrass" thrown in.
Cool thing: I learned REM are from Athens, Georgia. Land near there is where my Arnold ancestors migrated after land near Farmville, VA (very near, less than 15 miles in both cases).
Question - did a Mississippian manage to be in a UK university in the 80s? Residential college as in Oxbridge?
"Losing My Religion" is a mid-period song of theirs that's a bit of a throwback to their early style. The song that was their breakout to a wider non-college listenership, "So. Central Rain" from 1984, has a similar feel but no mandolin -- just jangly guitar.
It doesn’t help that most modern country music is dull, institutionalized pop-schlock. Country music is the umbrella label that this young man will probably fall under the edge of for most purposes. Like Colter Wall, the Canadian farm boy:
Yes, and Colter Wall was unique (first I had heard him when I clicked on the link) and it seemed like blues would be his strongest influence? But a blend of styles, and an original style, the "umbrella label of country" not helpful as you said.
Yes! Virginia is an interesting state that way. The ultra-woke precincts of Charlottesville-Albemarle County surrounded by red-state counties as well as the DC suburban blob expanding into the Commonwealth are a laboratory for how Americans in general might learn to get along, or not, in the near future.
Yeah most of the independent cities are blue & the counties around them red with some notable exceptions (Albemarle, Montgomery, some of Southside & the Penninsula). I live in Rockingham County which goes 70% R in elections while the City of Harrisonburg goes 60% D. I haven’t detected much city/county animosity. It’s more of both being annoyed with hard partying JMU students. The same town vs gown stuff from time out of mind. One of my kids lives in Arlington. Some people think it’s not “the real Virginia” but it’s just as much so as Hampton Roads with all the military bases & government installations. Or the suburban counties around Richmond. Thanks to Rod for the info on Oliver Anthony. I don’t like pop country either but he, like Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, & Hank Williams (Sr. & Jr.) is the real deal.
THANK YOU! From Roanoke 💙
Oliver Anthony - oh my! His voice is like Hank Jr with Woody Guthrie anger. His introduction video is so touching, heartfelt and sincere. Another artist I’ve recently discovered is Abe Partridge. https://livesessions.npr.org/videos/abe-partridge-love-in-the-dark-30a-songwriters-sessions
Hahahah, thanks for that. This guy is a trip.
Does the girl LOVE her lesbian nana? Maybe she was COMPLIMENTING the policewoman. Maybe the police should have asked before they took offense.
And, of course, their personal offense should count as nothing under criminal law.
That was my thought. My kid has a really hard time with expressing himself and sometimes you can’t tell if he is being serious or joking around.
My husband is so afraid of a situation like this happening because of overzealous cops not being able to understand my kid when he talks. He speaks more clearly than he did when he started speech therapy, but he may never speak perfectly clear.
A lot of autistic people just state facts and it’s really a neutral statement, not judging one way or the other.
IMO the British TV show Doc Martin is entertaining nonsense. We have a doctor who cannot stand the sight of blood. We also have a village bobby who in his blend of idealism and naivety is the complete opposite of these mean heartless LEOs who seem to be running and ruining British life. You have to wonder if it is all a deliberate distraction.
It sounds like the policewoman is the homophobe. She couldn’t stand being compared to a lesbian.
I don’t like the word, I think it is vacuous, but yes I wonder, just as I wonder why some civil rights advocates are closet racists.
That’s what I was thinking too! Turn around their ridiculousness.
The American Spirit, the Spirit of the Lord. Still out there, still active. Stories like these, they come together.
You know, some commenters in these boxes like to take the line that Constitution is a dead letter and how long does Ron Paul lasagne last in the freeze dry? But the U.K. story reinforces the injunction to get down on your knees and thank God for having created George Mason. "Homophobic public order offense"! It's going to be some time before we sink that low.
The British are no longer capable of civilized self-government, on the evidence.
Its a blessing to discover Oliver Anthony the same week we lost the estimable Robbie Robertson. "Rich men north of Richmond" is the kind of perfect little turn of phrase that we would expect from Robertson.
That wasn't about homophobia - it's about a cop on a power trip that decided that girl had to GO. Lot of it about.
Exactly. I’ve seen reports of too many incidents where a perfectly reasonable explanation is ready to hand, but the cops refuse even to hear it. Reports of black men who themselves called the police for assistance, only to be mistaken for the perpetrator and detained, despite neighbors’ pleas supporting the man detained. It’s part of a wider phenomenon in which fewer and fewer people seem capable of the least mental humility that tells them to pause and consider whether their first impressions might not be mistaken. I’m not talking about cops making split second decisions in an active scenario, but about episodes where it is entirely possible to just listen and put two and two together. The same phenomenon leads ignorant and impatient people to denounce those who misspeak or use unfamiliar words and phrases.
Yep. That truckdriver who was chased by the highway patrol for a missing mud flap?
That video brought me the chills. As I was watching, I whispered to myself, "My gosh, Orwell was right about everything."
Same
Thanks for sharing about Oliver Anthony. I listen to a lot of "alternative" country music. Most stuff coming out of Nashville and played on the radio is trite garbage. There is some authentic stuff coming out of western Canada, the mountain west and rural areas of Appalachia.
Charles Wesley Goodwin out WV and Colby Acuff out of ID are two of my favorites. Acuff's "If I Were the Devil" is a great commentary on the current state of things. Goodwin's new album "Family Ties" has some good songs as well.
Virgil Caine is alive and well.
Too many of the good Brits are dead, “strewn on the fields of Belgium and France.” Their progeny are largely depopulating despite copulating, more worried about crap as shown here when they should worry about their sending ridiculous support for Ukraine, pushing for more war on behalf of uncle sam, bashing and arresting Christians, ... A disintegrating mass of what could have been good. We are running neck and neck with them on this road to perdition.
Hat tip for the Children’s Crusade reference in support of a good point. I myself have wondered how the land of my ancestors has lost so much steel out of its spine that it’s reduced to tolerating what the video shows. England, indeed, “is not the mythical land of Madame George and her roses.”
Hold on, please. We will see what folk in the UK do about this. In my view, things have gone downhill there, but not so much as to generally accept this. The incident, which should never have happened, is being investigated.
I think the UK is wrong to have laws censoring speech, but it is obvious the girl did not even break the law. Let's see if the investigation condemns the actions of the police. I believe it is likely to do so. We shall see.
Well...having spent some years in the UK....and the Brits being asleep now....
UK folk meant to be kind by forbidding homophobic remarks.
Yes, yes, I agree there should be free speech even if feelings are hurt are even if people, even gay young people, feel awful when they hear the remark. It is wrong to make an actual homophobic slur, but the old saying about "you can't legislate morality" applies here. That is not understood in British culture which puts far more emphasis than the USA does on polite expression. - Not agreeing with the law, just explaining. It is not "wicked" people who made it. It is well-intentioned misguided people.
This is not about the best dying on Flander's field. People of every type went to WW1, not just the "good" ones. The "bad" ones did not get to refuse to fight. In fact, what of the rare ones who did not fight? Those choosing ambulance service because they were pacifists and COs, and facing pretty strong persecution after the war, were probably very gooe people!
These are abusive cops who show no understanding of autism enforcing the law in a way they should not.
Yes, it is about totalitarianism - trying to control thoughts - in this case about homosexuals by forbidding any negative expression. In this video we can't even call it "soft" totalitarianism - this is "hard".
Brits are not perfect but they are still a people I love.
Oops...I just reread - "Brits being asleep now" was literal. When I posted this around 6pm it was midnight in the UK.
Thanks Bailey of the Ilk. I love Britain and things British/English; I yearn for their salvation as a just and peaceful place as I do for my own land (Tolkien’s perspective on one’s motherland vs an empire). But, methinks that ain’t in the cards. For some sanity, watch Fr. Spyridon (also a Bailey btw) before You Tube knocks him off.
Thanks for the link. That guy is great. I’d call it Americana, which is a meeting place of the music of poor white folk with the music of poor black folk. He’d better be careful though. The Nashville machine loves a rebel they think they can control. He reminds me a bit of Steve Earle who had a good run in Nashville in the 80s before his heroin use became more important than his guitar and he landed in jail. He’s been making music again since the mid 90s but he’s not the same man.
Yes! Pre-jail Steve Earle was part of the soundtrack of my adolescence.
You can start pushing back on the kind of totalitarianism exhibited by the ridiculous Brit "hate" crime laws by rejecting the perversion of language these types of laws rely on. Homophobia, especially in the context of an autistic teenager being "homophobic" by making the remark she made, isn't actually a thing. It's a made up word to shame people who don't morally agree with the LGBT agenda, by framing that opposition as a 'phobia', or form of mental illness. The implication is, "Of course you should accept [fill in the LGBT blank]; not accepting it is a mental sickness, a literal *phobia*!"
Time to call bull$#!t and reclaim language. Per wikipedia's first line in the phobia entry: "A phobia is an anxiety disorder, defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation." This does not mean what the Left thinks it means. People who oppose the LGBT movement suffer no debilitating anxiety or excessive fear of LGBT individuals. Unless the Left is willing to self-diagnose as having "fetusphobia", "Christophobia", "heterophobia", and "caucasiaphobia", they really ought to stop inventing ridiculous terminology for people who simply don't like their political agenda, and the rest of us should start refusing to acquiesce when they do.
I think it was the Soviets who came up with the idea of labelling political dissenters as mentally ill, but it crossed the pond with Adorno's "Authoritarian Personality", which is about as scientific as astrology. (The Critical "Theorists" had tremendous science envy and also knew that their political program would go down smoother coated with a patina of pseudoscience.)
But the basic premise is the same: anyone still clinging to god, country and family instead of dedicating their lives to the Socialist Revolution is obviously twisted and dangerous, a potential fascist ready to start a genocide at any moment.
Just think: we rescued the Frankfurt School aristocrats from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, gave them and their families safe and prosperous lives, and in return they denounced the entire country as intolerant!
But the Left will never relinquish the pathologization of dissent as a weapon, it's on a 100-yr winning streak.
My heritage is from East Tennessee. I like bluegrass music, that is, mountain music. I generally do not like country music.
I think Oliver Anthony is singing mountain music. He is influenced by country, I hear that. But I mainly hear bluegrass. The vocal delivery style, the picking style. This is not country - it is bluegrass, I think.
I don't guarantee that I am right, but I think I am. Yes, I know, he lives in Farmville, Virginia. This is in the county where my earliest known Arnold ancestor lived, 1736 until his death in 1777. It is not "the mountains". But I still think this is mountain music. At least more than half mountain music.
edit to add this: Can we at least agree this is "folk music", not country? (Bluegrass and mountain are folk of a type, but if this is a different type of folk, so be it.)
Farmville also gave us Vince Gilligan. Not bad for a place like that!
Interesting!
I looked it up. William Arnold's land was 14 miles NNW of Farmville. Oliver Anthony is on 90 acres "in" Farmville, but of course not in town. Wouldn't it be cool if he was on the old Arnold land, now his land.
There is also this, which I thought was a not-unfair article on Anthony in Rolling Stone:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/rich-men-north-of-richmond-oliver-anthony-conservative-country-song-1234805701/
Country, folk, and bluegrass have so intertwined over the years that it's not always easy to place artists in strict categories. Lots of this stuff simply overlaps.
Indeed! I agree. However, I do bristle a bit to hear Anthony called "country". In my heritage group, we do not refer to bluegrass and mountain music as "country". :)
Genres have overlap, but an artist is usually identified by one genre or another. So that is my bug-a-boo with saying Anthony is "country". Nashville and Knoxville are really very different.
(Sorta like some feel the north of England could be its own country, with so much difference form the south.)
Right. It's an unfortunate thing that any music that's Southern/Western/mountain/old-timey has come to be put under the "country" umbrella. The latter term has become a somewhat useless broad handle for anything that has a twang.
I'm old enough to remember when bands like Poco and The Eagles were considered "country rock." Yet in 1980 I had a college roomate from Mississippi who was a bluegrass banjo player and he had never even heard the term "country rock." When I first mentioned it to him he laughed and thought I was joking.
I also remember when REM's first music came out that a lot of people who liked new wave and what's now called "post-punk" didn't really get them because they sounded too "country."
Interesting. I didn't know a lot about REM but looked them up after your post. The mandolin in "Losing My Religion" - is it also in their early music? Coud it be the old bluegrass= country thing, with "mandolin = bluegrass" thrown in.
Cool thing: I learned REM are from Athens, Georgia. Land near there is where my Arnold ancestors migrated after land near Farmville, VA (very near, less than 15 miles in both cases).
Question - did a Mississippian manage to be in a UK university in the 80s? Residential college as in Oxbridge?
"Losing My Religion" is a mid-period song of theirs that's a bit of a throwback to their early style. The song that was their breakout to a wider non-college listenership, "So. Central Rain" from 1984, has a similar feel but no mandolin -- just jangly guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msWi0c4tHV8
I'm from the US -- went to college in Dallas, which is where I met the guy from Meridian, Mississippi.
I agree, OA is definitely Bluegrass with some Country influences.
It doesn’t help that most modern country music is dull, institutionalized pop-schlock. Country music is the umbrella label that this young man will probably fall under the edge of for most purposes. Like Colter Wall, the Canadian farm boy:
https://youtu.be/4l4gdhPqh3E
Yes, and Colter Wall was unique (first I had heard him when I clicked on the link) and it seemed like blues would be his strongest influence? But a blend of styles, and an original style, the "umbrella label of country" not helpful as you said.