Charlie's Soapbox

August 16, 2005 1:53 PM

Super patriot Charlie Daniels famous for warning hippies that "it's a flag, not no rag" wrote about the Kosovo War back in the day... yeah... it's ironic.
posted by DougieZero1982 (45 comments total)

I fucked up the page... please spare my account!
posted by DougieZero1982 at 1:54 PM on August 16, 2005

quick, run in circles and panic!
posted by TwelveTwo at 2:07 PM on August 16, 2005

See, you don't understand-- in Kosovo it was Muslims being killed, and in Iraq it's killing Muslims. BIG difference.
posted by cell divide at 2:26 PM on August 16, 2005

9/11 changed everything.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:26 PM on August 16, 2005

"Let's go in with both barrels blazing, shoot anything in sight wearing a Serb uniform..."

Charlie appears to be one of those born-again Christians who never bothered to read the Sermon on the Mount, or else decided that Jesus must have been kidding when he said "I tell you not to resist an evil person."

He's certainly not one of those wimpy Christians, like Martin Luther King, Jr., who took those words at face value.
posted by wadefranklin at 2:31 PM on August 16, 2005

Why don't ya leave that long haired country boy alone




(since he's an idiot)
posted by hackly_fracture at 2:33 PM on August 16, 2005

Can it be a coincidence that this was posted on the same day McSweeney's posted Thirty-Nine Questions for Charlie Daniels upon Hearing "The Devil Went Down to George" for the First Time in Twenty-Five Years?
posted by BackwardsCity at 2:35 PM on August 16, 2005

Georgia. The point stands.
posted by BackwardsCity at 2:35 PM on August 16, 2005

Someone please email him with a polite analysis of his hypocrisy regarding Iraq v. Kosovo and then report back to us with how he responds. I'd seriously be interested in how he defends it.
posted by dhoyt at 2:37 PM on August 16, 2005

The devil did what to George? [blush]
posted by coach_mcguirk at 2:44 PM on August 16, 2005

See, a democrat getting us involved in a potential quagmire is treasonous. A republican getting us involved in a potential quagmire is spreading democracy.

Hope that helped.

I enjoy Charlie Daniels' music, and I have met him in person. He is a genuine American, and proud to be. He is involved in many charitable activities, and is legitimately a nice guy with a big heart, and one hell of a fiddle player.

But the over-the-top flag waving patriotism he (and Toby Keith) participate in doesn't benefit anyone.

If you love the troops, and want to support them, then support getting them back home.
posted by Ynoxas at 2:52 PM on August 16, 2005

IOKIYAR
posted by Suck Poppet at 2:58 PM on August 16, 2005

Does anyone manufacture Stars and Stripes toilet paper? There's a million to be made!
posted by cleardawn at 3:01 PM on August 16, 2005

This is a "Worst of the Web" discovery, am I correct? Yes, it demonstrates that yet ANOTHER right-winger is a blatant hypocrite. Does clicking the link bring any edification other than that particular realization?

I admit, I used to enjoy such discoveries, e.g. Santorum's offhand, absurd Godwinization only months after he attacked Byrd for a vastly more appropriate one. This particular one doesn't seem like a Best of the Web entry. (Nothing personal, DougieZero1982.)
posted by Aknaton at 3:05 PM on August 16, 2005

That McSweeney's article was hilarious, BackwardsCity.
posted by jcruelty at 3:11 PM on August 16, 2005

Charley was something of a hippie back in the day. he wrote "Uneasy Rider" for cryin out loud (plus "Trudy," and "Caballo Diablo" and a few other classic stompers), and he's played with Bob Dylan and Mark O'Connor. He also specifically and publically asked David Duke to stop using his song "A Few More Rednecks." He's a confusing dude.
posted by jonmc at 3:15 PM on August 16, 2005

It's amusing how he says our military can't get the job done in Kosovo, because Bill Clinton had cut it back so badly.

Folks like Daniels never change the channel from Rush Limbaugh, do they? Clinton's only "cuts" were to allow the Bush I plan to scale back the gigantic cold-war military to continue. Folks on the right love to completely ignore this, and pretend that Clinton just up and decided to eviscerate the military for fun. Any one on the right remember the term "peace dividend?" Hint: it wasn't only radical pacifists using that term. It's not like this is ancient history, here, we're talking 15 years.

Propaganda powers such as this scare me greatly.
posted by teece at 3:17 PM on August 16, 2005

Folks like Daniels never change the channel from Rush Limbaugh, do they?

Did you read any of my comment at all? or Ynoxas's?

His position on the war in Iraq is 100% wrongheaded, but his previous history, while a mixed bag (like most people's) reveals him to not be the unmitigated lunkhead some would have you believe.
posted by jonmc at 3:27 PM on August 16, 2005

I don't really see the hypocricy:

"Let’s go in with both barrels blazing, shoot anything in sight wearing a Serb uniform, get the job done and bring the troops home. In the first place Bill Clinton has quietly cut our military forces to the point that I’m not sure we could mount the kind of all out offensive we’d need to accomplish that goal."

It's not as if he was a moral anti-war protester then, and is a war cheerleader now.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:30 PM on August 16, 2005

But the over-the-top flag waving patriotism he (and Toby Keith) participate in doesn't benefit anyone.

I'm sure Toby Keith's bank account would say otherwise.
posted by justgary at 3:38 PM on August 16, 2005

It's not as if he was a moral anti-war protester then, and is a war cheerleader now.

Back in the Vietnam era Charlie was a self-identified hippie freak, and anti-war at least by association. He also wrote "Still In Saigon," a very good and heartfelt song about Vietnam Veterans. By his artistic track record and Ynoxas' description he seems like the type of personal who was alienated by the left and courted masterfully by the right during the Reagan/Carter era of "National Malaise." It makes him muddleheaded and easily led, perhaps, but not evil.
posted by jonmc at 3:39 PM on August 16, 2005

jonmc, you can be amazingly annoying sometimes.

I didn't say he was a lunkhead. I didn't say he was a bad guy. I actually didn't address much of anything except his Clinton cuts idea. His idea that Clinton crippled the military is A) a very common right wing talking point, and B) easily seen as stupidity with just a moment's examination.

So whatever else the guy may think, he was getting his ideas on Kosovo in the late '90s from one place, and one place only: right wing propagandists like Limbaugh.

You have a gay old time with your straw man, though. About the only point you have is that I should have added a qualifier to the Limbaugh line. Yay for you.

Like I said, people that have this narrow a range of experience scare me, even if he's a decent fellow who thinks critically elsewhere. Because he sure as hell ain't here, and more worryingly, he's parroting vapid, idiotic talking points of cynical propagandists. I wonder what other stupid and dangerous things the guy (and the millions others like him) can be made to believe.
posted by teece at 3:46 PM on August 16, 2005

See, a democrat getting us involved in a potential quagmire is treasonous.
Though Dole backed Clinton on this, thus sealing a forever friendship.
posted by thomcatspike at 3:50 PM on August 16, 2005

It's fun to root around in Charlie's archives and find gems like:

It’s a strange world where John Rocker, a baseball pitcher can get drummed out of baseball for making what media hacks considered racial slurs and Jane Fonda can sell out her nation and win an academy award. [July 15, 2005]

What hacks considered racial slurs? Har! And:

Would the BBC and CNN like to see America cease to exist? Do they want to see America defeated in the war on terror? If that is not their purpose, then what is? [July 29th, 2005]

And this gem of sarcasm:

Oh save us John Kerry, get us all visas so we can move to France and champion the causes of the exploding Muslim population there and leave behind this despicable place called the United States of America. [August 23, 2004]

Thanks, DougieZero! From now on, I'm a regular Soapbox reader!
posted by Superfrankenstein at 3:51 PM on August 16, 2005

Like I said, people that have this narrow a range of experience scare me, even if he's a decent fellow who thinks critically elsewhere. Because he sure as hell ain't here, and more worryingly, he's parroting vapid, idiotic talking points of cynical propagandists. I wonder what other stupid and dangerous things the guy (and the millions others like him) can be made to believe.

I don't disagree with you, necessarily, teece, and I'm sorry if I annoy you, but this is something that's important to me (and I believe to the political future of our country)-to try and find out how fundamentally decent people can be made to believe (and in Charlie's case promote) fundamentally indecent things like this fucking war.

And my points about describing his hippie anthem writing past and stands against racism, and and association with Dylan ( I have a great bootleg of him playing bass at a studio jam session in the 70's and asking Bob to do "Gates Of Eden.") tells me that his experience isn't so narrow. People get led all kinds of places by their experiences, what they see and hear from others, and by propogandists who prey on those experiences like you say. I've had freinds and family members who've veered back and forth between political veiws.

Tom Waits once said that Americans veiw Presidents the way we veiw TV shows. We got tired of the Carter show show we switched to the Reagan show. We didn't like the Bush Sr. spinoff so we switched to the Clinton show. I'm interested in why this happens, and this seemed like a place to bring that up since Charlie Daniels seems like an interesting case of it.
posted by jonmc at 3:55 PM on August 16, 2005

Jane Fonda can sell out her nation and win an academy award. [July 15, 2005]
He makes it sound like she won the award for her political stance. Didn't she win her first Oscar, then later on a trip to Vietnam sell out her nation? Plus that would make a better time line for selling one out with fame coming first. Though he may be referring to her second academy award.
posted by thomcatspike at 4:03 PM on August 16, 2005

Charlie Daniels is a commercial artist who says and does whatever it takes to sell his music to rednecks, which are his core clientele. His "soapbox" is just another publicity outlet; when rednecks were against Clinton he spoke against Clinton; now that the rednecks are for Bush he speaks in favor of Bush.

So, a cash-driven publicity whore.
posted by clevershark at 4:06 PM on August 16, 2005

I *like* Charlie Daniels songs. Well, at least 3 or 4 of them. And Jonmc is right, he can be confusing, like when he wrote the "we're gonna kick Russkie ass" song in the early 80s and then wrote his "we're gonna kick Saddam's ass, *with Russia's help*" song in the early 90s (all lyrics paraphrases). And he's a fine musician.

I maintain he is an idiot. But then I think that Zach de la Rocha is an idiot, too.
posted by hackly_fracture at 5:07 PM on August 16, 2005

and Zach never wrote a song as fun as The Legend of Wooley Swamp.
posted by hackly_fracture at 5:10 PM on August 16, 2005

Zach never wrote a listenable song, period. Good music and good politics have very little to do with eachother.
posted by jonmc at 5:12 PM on August 16, 2005

Just saying intelligence and good music might not correlate exactly either.
posted by hackly_fracture at 5:34 PM on August 16, 2005

or cultural indicators like "worked with Bob Dylan," else we would all be singing the praises of G.E. Smith.
posted by hackly_fracture at 5:36 PM on August 16, 2005

For sure, dude, but "big and dumb," rock is often the best rock of all.
posted by jonmc at 5:36 PM on August 16, 2005

and Zach never wrote a song as fun as The Legend of Wooley Swamp

OMG, that's the name of that song! I remember a scary, scary Charlie Daniels song when I was really young but could never remember the name. thx hackley!

I'm sure everyone's already done this, but in that CD article, just replace the word "Kosovo" with "Iraq", "Clinton" with "Bush". Instant hipocracy!
posted by zardoz at 5:44 PM on August 16, 2005

"Who's leading the anti-war movement? Congressional Republicans."
posted by Armitage Shanks at 6:09 PM on August 16, 2005

Therein lies waht's wrong with politics right now, Armitage, it ceased to be about right and wrong a long time ago, now it's all about party loyalty, on both sides.
posted by jonmc at 6:12 PM on August 16, 2005

Good music and good politics can be done. Rage against the Machine may not be to your liking, or Crass, or the Clash, or Fugazi, Dead Kennedys, but I'm sure there's something to your liking out there.
posted by destro at 6:18 PM on August 16, 2005

I'm not saying that it occasionaly dosen't hit on bot cylinders, destro, (the MC5 and the Clash are favorites of mine, for instance) but politics should never be a prerequisite for jusdging musical quality, since there are plenty of bands with good politics and shitty music and vice versa, and the music is ultimately what's most important to me when I slap the record on the box.
posted by jonmc at 6:23 PM on August 16, 2005

I wonder if Charlie knows there wasn't a single American casualty in Clinton's Kosovo attack. Bush and Iraq, not so much...
posted by fungible at 9:08 PM on August 16, 2005

But he assuted Pat Robertson that there wouldn't be any casualties.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:00 PM on August 16, 2005

I'll just chime in to say that the intervention in Kosovo was complicated, botched, mind-numbingly confusing, ill-planned, but also the right thing to do. Many Republicans were just trying to bring down Clinton rather than legislate effectively. Many Dems are playing this game now, ie, putting politics over the Iraq situation, but now the Republicans have made their own bed.

And what destro said, but he should have mentioned Le Tigre, Gang of Four, Husker Du ("Divide and Conquer"), and Sleater Kinney as well.
posted by bardic at 10:37 PM on August 16, 2005

BTW Neil Young also had some wierd 1980's flirtations with Reagan, but he seems to have gotten over it.
posted by bardic at 10:42 PM on August 16, 2005

There's no irony here and no contradiction. In Kosovo, he was in favor of brutal and quite possibly illegal military action to kill the guy that the government annointed bad-guy-of-the-week and a whole bunch of other people along with him. In Iraq, he's in favor of the same thing.
posted by Clay201 at 10:58 PM on August 16, 2005

I wish the hell Charlie Daniels would move to Texas and get his sorry ass out of Tennessee. It would raise the IQ of both states. :-)
posted by nofundy at 7:01 AM on August 17, 2005

Regardless of what side of the political debate you are on, it is amazing how CD has changed his rhetoric. There may be something of real interest here. The "long haired country boy" image, making jokes about Wallace bumperstickers was *assumed* to be left leaning, but it turns out that CD is quite conservative, particularly with regard to "America right or wrong" sort of post 9/11 thinking.

Perhaps this reflects assumptions the Democratic party has made, as well.

For me, he's an idiot. But, it is interesting.
posted by re6smith at 10:14 AM on August 17, 2005