As the furor grows over the attempted cancellation of Jason Aldean for his unapologetically patriotic song and video for ” Try That in a Small Town,” more and more celebrities and artists are standing squarely behind Aldean. The latest to throw his support behind the Academy of Country Music’s “Artist of the Decade” is none other than the man behind perhaps the most patriotic country song of all time.
Lee Greenwood, the man that recorded the song “Proud to Be An American,” has spoken out in defense of Jason Aldean and the message behind Aldean’s hit record. The song was released in May but only gained national attention after the music video was released in July.
The video features Aldean and his band singing in front of the infamous Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where a famous lynching happened almost 100 years ago. It also coincidentally is a town that is still reeling from recent tornadoes and, whether intentionally or not, is benefitting from the music video.
The left has furiously attempted to connect the location of the video with the lynching, claiming that the messaging is racist despite race never being mentioned in the lyrical content of the song. In fact, the song is simply a message that small-town America will not tolerate what is taking place in the larger, democrat-run cities.
Aldean mentions carjacking, robberies, and disrespecting police, while assuring prospective criminals that type of behavior won’t fly in a small town. The video features real news footage from the 2020 riots, and to many on the left is an attempt to stoke racial division.
Lee Greenwood weighed in on the controversy recently
After CMT’s cowardly decision to remove the music video from rotation, Greenwood defended Aldean’s small-town take: “I am from a small town in California and people cannot take our freedom away because people know everybody in a small town and that is what the heart of America is. It’s rural America.”
While the leftist media is trying to make the song a treatise on gun violence and the glorification of the Second Amendment, Greenwood sees it very differently: “When you talk about guns and having them in your home for defense, it is not about an offensive weapon, it’s about hunting, it’s about having the right to have the gun and the people on the other side of that, it is the idiots that take to the street and kill other people.”
The irony of the issue is while CMT has shown its true colors, and other artists and talking heads have done everything they can to cancel Aldean, the song has shot to the top of the charts through word of mouth and curiosity.
The song was released in May and very well may have just been another borderline hit for Aldean, but the angst and hatred spewing from liberals everywhere reignited the song to the top of the charts. Not exactly the desired outcome from a side of the aisle that takes every opportunity to spread division.
It will be interesting to see the lasting effects on CMT, and how long the song will stay in the top ten now that the left has put it front and center for all to see.
