It wouldn’t be so bad if the song wasn’t so damn popular
I looked for them real quick in the comments and I didn’t see them so here’s the lyrics to the actual song:
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.
Pre-Chorus: 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.
Chorus: 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.
Repeat Pre-Chorus
Repeat Chorus
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay.
💩💩💩
its always the ones you most expect
Can you expand on that… Sorry 😔😐
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
In this case duck is bigoted shitbag
This song doesn’t seem nearly as hideous as it’s portrayed in this article. Sure, the fatphobic and anti-welfare lyrics are ignorant and slightly bigoted, but I see no direct evidence of any racism or antisemitism. This article seems to try and misconstrue Anthony’s lyrics heavily here.
Happy cake day and welcome to Beehaw!
I’m more of a Rob Taxpayer man myself.
What a weasely, deceptively meandering little article.
First it spends its time talking about actual overt displays of racism and anti-semitism, but writes it in a way that makes it easy to confuse what they’re referring to with the song itself, as if Anthony is somehow responsible for the actions of Trump or conservative country singers. This is pretty transparent and pathetic.
When it actually talks about the song, it points out its fatphobic, anti-welfare lyric as its only evidence of racism and anti-semitism. While I certainly agree that this line is ignorant (and indicative of a backward political sensibility), there’s no mention of race. There’s certainly a strong correlation between anti-welfare sentiments and racism, but the one doesn’t really qualify as a strong demonstration of the other. The article, however, seems to think this is plenty, and drives right on forward as if they had their proof.
What really raises an eyebrow about this article, though, is its sudden pivot to what seems to be overt Russian propaganda. They typify the war in Ukraine as ‘US led and provoked’ and Ukraine itself as a ‘fascist-infested regime’. This while mocking US humanitarian efforts and #MeToo, as well, seemingly, as leftist ‘racial and gender politics’. It even takes the time to hate on unions.
This article claims to be from a socialist source, and yet all of its positions outside of its opposition to what it describes as racism and anti-semitism, are anti-leftist. Curious.
Sounds like WSWS is a potential candidate for a Kremlin mouthpiece.
Not even “potential”, that’s what it’s been famous for way before the 2022 Ukraine war.
Ohhh. Well, good to know!
Article: The phrase “Rich men north of Richmond” is a cleverly disguised antisemitic trope
The guy that wrote the song: “It was funny seeing my song at that (Republican) presidential debate. Because I wrote that song about those people"
Source for quote:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/25/rich-men-north-of-richmond-oliver-anthony-republicansCalling everything racist isn’t helpful. This song is a poor man’s cry for economic justice, and instead of saying “yeah, that’s the 1% we’ve been complaining about, come over to our side,” the left calls it racist because it has Southern imagery in it.
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Please be nice.
This article did point out the fucked up depiction of obesity and poverty, but otherwise woof
I always feel my heart sink when someone maligns “welfare queens.” There is only one person among my friends who was ever on public assistance; and it was me. During months of chemo and surgeries I couldn’t work, and I was sucking off the government teat.
What’s “woof” mean?
(they dressed a boy as a girl as they thought it’d be too cruel to have this line said about an actual girl)
“oh man” “holy cow” “good lord” “thats a lot to unpack”
And still no explanation why
Why what?
What’s so “woof” about it?
Generally, I use it to describe something way off the mark. I feel like this article is pretty classist and out of touch. I get being hyper aware of dog whistles these days, but I interpreted the artist differently. I think he was dressing a pro worker sentiment in swallowable form, whereas the article seems to think he was using pro worker language to dress up anti semitism. Frankly, I don’t think people feel the need to hide their bigotry that much anymore. If this song came out in 2004, I probably would be more critical. But today, I think pro worker sentiment needs to be hidden more than fascism.
Sure it does.
Where’s the antisemitism?
Literally in the article you clearly didn’t read:
“rich men” in “northern cities” is a familiar trope to the antisemitic right. Leading Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has held regular campaign events which target “globalists,” a far-right code word for Jews, who supposedly are seeking to attack America.
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That’s pretty explicitly antisemitic…
🤦♂️
The singer does seem to be trying to distance himself from the conservative implications:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/25/entertainment/oliver-anthony-song-response/index.html
“The one thing that has bothered me is seeing people wrap politics up into this,” Anthony said. “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them. It’s aggravating seeing certain musicians and politicians act like we’re buddies and act like we’re fighting the same struggle here, like that we’re trying to present the same message.”
But the line about:
Well, God, if you’re five-foot-three and you’re three-hundred pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of Fudge Roundsseems a bit hateful unless that’s supposed to be a metaphor for “fat cats”. The CNN article thinks it’s a metaphor:
“though it has also courted controversy for its lyrics referring to politicians as “obese,” welfare recipients “milking” the system,”
But the antisemitic connotations seem like a stretch to me. To assuming that criticism of capitalists is automatically antisemitic seems pretty antisemitic to me in it’s own right.
Are globalists and rich people only Jewish though? Not at all.
I think people are really stretching to call it anti-semitic.
I don’t like how the song addresses people with welfare but I definitely wouldn’t call it racist or anti -semitic. However that’s just my own opinion and people can form whatever conclusions they want.
It’s just part of the code. “Globalist” is often especially about Jewish banking families, eg Rothchilds or Soros. Similar to how “urban” in the US is often code for ‘black,’ even though most of the people who live in urban areas are white. Dog whistles: words that communicate specific meaning within a community without being recognized by the larger population.
Except that it’s Trump who’s being quoted as saying ‘globalists’ in this mess of an article, not Anthony.
You mean the article that rolls its eyes at humanitarian efforts, #MeToo, and leftist support of oppressed minorities? The article that literally blames the US for the invasion of Ukraine?
Also, you caught that it’s Trump who was talking about globalists, right? It’s easy to miss because the article is intentionally trying to get you to miss it.
Damn, I knew none of this. Which is of course the point.
