Art, Emotion, and, Politics: Part One

Understanding the difference between artistic talent and the message it sends.

A while back a strange song written and performed by a fellow named Oliver Anthony became very popular in the USA. How popular? It was the first song he’d ever gotten onto the Billboard Hot 100 list—and it started at #1. Moreover, it wasn’t being promoted by a record label, just his YouTube channel. To be honest, as a performance it’s pretty good. But from the first time I heard it, there was something about it that bugged me.

What’s my beef?

It’s certainly not the singer’s skill in execution. Anthony is an absolute genius musician. You don’t have to take my word for it, because I found a voice teacher named Elizabeth Zharoff with a YouTube video where she explains in significant detail the depth of Anthony’s musical ability.

The first thing I want to point out is that Zharoff suggests Anthony is (for want of a better term) ‘channeling’ his emotions as part of his performance.

Zharoff goes on in great length (an almost 30 minute video) to point out how complicated it is to create a song like Rich Men North of Richmond, even though the effect he wants to create is that of totally spontaneous, authentic, unscripted sound. That’s why he only uses a guitar, is in the countryside, has limited quality in his recording system, and, even has his dogs in the video. The artifice that Anthony puts into his song doesn’t come from modern technology, instead it’s in the way he carefully manipulates his voice, setting, and, recording technology to frame his performance.

But one thing really bugs me about the song, though. And it comes up in Zharoff’s conclusion to her commentary:

“The raw talent is extraordinary—but the message is key.”

That’s what bugs me: the message.

What is the message? to understand that, let’s look at those lyrics.

"Rich Men North Of Richmond"

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay

Let’s parse these words. Consider the first two stanzas:

Nothing odd here. Lots of people work at crummy jobs for starvation wages. It’s only reasonable that a folk singer would write a song about this. Where the oddness comes in for me, is what comes after. That is to say, Anthony sets up a legitimate problem but blames it on dubious causes.

Now let’s look at the next part:

First of all, who exactly are these “Rich men North of Richmond”? This is a tremendously vague group to be angry at. Does he mean capitalists? Does he mean politicians? Does he give a pass to the rich men South of Richmond? How about in Richmond? It sounds to me like this is a place-holder term that allows the listener to insert whatever group he or she’s pissed at: city people, Jews, libruls, educated folks, politicians (either all stripes—or one or the other of the two parties), space lizards mascarading as humans?

Even worse, when Anthony tries to identify exactly what this extremely vague set of people are doing, we get another set of excruciatingly vague terms. These people:

1. want to have total control

2. want know what you think and do

3. are to blame for inflation and high taxes

Is there any reason present that would explain why these people are doing this? Is there any discussion at a mechanism about how?

These are not trivial issues. For example, who wants control? Is it Mark Zuckerberg, the Deep State, the political parties, the Military Industrial Complex? I could ask the same sorts of questions with regard to inflation and taxes.

OK. Just which of these people are one of the “rich men North of Richmond”? George Soros, Anthony Fauci, Mark Zuckerberg, or, ol’ Pun’kin Head?

The issue I’m trying to point out is this isn’t a message—it’s a vibe. And the vibe is,

I feel crappy about the world and it has nothing to do with the choices I’ve made in my life—it’s something that has been done to me.

I can understand this point of view. I often get totally steamed about the way people get jerked around by our system. The difference is, I am concerned about where I direct my anger because I want to aim it at the people who really are jerking us around. Moreover, I try to understand why people do the things they do. If someone does something monstrous, I want to know what about their psychological make-up led them to this behaviour. I also want to know what is it about our system that gave them the power to do whatever it is that I deem monstrous.

I get it, Oliver Anthony is really upset about the world he finds himself in. I can certainly understand the emotion—I often feel this way myself. But later on the song he gives a hint to listeners about who it is that he really feels for and why he thinks we are in the mess we are in.

Oops.

At this point ol’ Anthony lets the cat out of the bag. The two practical examples he uses in this song to identify the perfidy of the Rich Men North of Richmond is that they care about “minors on an island somewhere” and “the obese milkin’ welfare”. and, not “Young men [who] are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground”.

I did some looking around and it appears that no one really knows for sure what he’s talking about in this stanza—but there are some speculations I’ve heard that while they might not actually be true, sure sound like they could be.

First, think about those “minors on an island somewhere”. One of the speculations I heard was that he was making a reference to the girls that Jeffrey Epstein raped on the island of Little Saint James ( or unofficially, “Island of Sin”, “Pedophile Island”, or, “Epstein Island”). Even if it wasn’t referring to that, the lyrics seem to imply that the USA can’t prosecute statutory rapists at the same time as treating miners (coal?) with some sort of respect. It’s like justice is something in short supply and needs to be rationed. “Sorry ma’am, we just helped coal miners keep their jobs—so you’re just going to have to accept your rape by a billionaire. If it happens again early next year, see us as we might have enough justice left in the budget to help you then.”

Next he seems to be suggesting that the reason why we have homeless people on the streets is because fat poor people are living the ‘the high life’ “milking welfare” and eating confectionary bombs.

Welfare is a big issue and I don’t want to get into it in this article, but I don’t really think of the USA as being particularly generous in it’s welfare system. I will however, direct interested readers to an article in ProPublica that would suggest that a lot of US states are incredibly stingy about who they allow to receive welfare and how much they get from it. Incredibly, even if the money comes from the federal government, many states would rather sit on it than give it to the people that Washington wants to have it.

Take a look at this graph that shows the amount of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF—that the money the feds transfers to the states to help fund their welfare programs) that is just sitting in state accounts without being spent.

Now let’s look at a graph of the population that has actually been given TANF benefits.

(I happen to have heard a little about how the social safety net works in the state of Missouri, and one thing I was told is you just about need a lawyer to get the benefits you might be entitled to on paper—because of the Byzantine regulations that are obviously designed to discourage people from applying.)

What I especially find apalling about this song is that Oliver Anthony makes no secret of the fact in both interviews and other songs that he has a drinking problem and suffers from an anxiety disorder. I don’t think less of him for this, but I do find it inexcusable that with personal experience of these problems he still makes a big deal about someone who is overweight and is addicted to junk food. (My problems are my problems—but you, over there—you’re just a lazy leech.)

Could someone explain to me why eating these sugar bombs to the point of obesity is somehow worse than drinking yourself into alcoholism? I pretty much see all forms of addiction being much the same.

What’s even worse, is immediately after ‘kicking down’ on welfare recipients and people with eating disorders, he complains about how society “kicks down” “young men”.

This is much less of an ambiguous stanza, and I think I can be excused from thinking that he’s really ‘dog whistling’ about the ‘welfare queen’ myth. He’s been called to task on this, and he denies it and instead says that he just thinks there should be some mechanism for helping people on welfare get more healthy food. Call me ‘dubious’ about this justification, but the fact is, a huge number of his fans are going to read it as an attack on welfare queens “milking welfare”.

Does this mean I think that Anthony is actually an under-cover white nationalist type or some other form of Alt-Right? Not really. At least a couple commentators have suggested that he really means well, it’s just that he’s (to quote—if memory serves—a reviewer from Slate) ‘kinda muddled’ in his thinking.

I can see this confusion arising. In his part of the world he would probably suffer horribly if he attempted to share my vision. If you wonder what I mean, consider the experience of this courageous fellow who stood at the side of a road in a small Arkansas town with a sign that simply said “Black Lives Matter”.

Oliver Anthony has been struggling to develop his musical ability since he was a young boy, and if he hadn’t been willing to write songs that are ambiguous and can be understood to be dog whistling support for the nasty, right-wing elements of rural America, he’d probably have suffered horrible ostracization. If this is true, Anthony isn’t a racist or neo-fascist—but he might be a coward or just ‘muddled in his thinking’.

Moreover, there is absolutely no relationship between someone’s skill and brilliance as an artist and their ability to understand anything else in the world. Some brilliant artists have supported the most awful systems of government. For example, consider Leni Riefenstahl and D. W. Griffith. The first did ground-breaking propaganda movies for NAZI Germany (Triumph of the Will) and the second made a film that was responsible for the restoration of the KKK as a major political force in the USA (Birth of A Nation).

D. W. Griffith and Leni Riefenstahl—both brilliant movie-makers and supporters of horrifically violent racist governments.

In fact this gap between the skills that artists can manifest in their craft and the idiocy this talent is used for was lampooned in the brilliant Rob Reiner movie This is Spinal Tap.

This is enough for one instalment. The second part of this article will be about why I think all of this matters.

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!