Merle Haggard Rocks New Song for Hillary

[rebel with a cause]

Reuters
NEW YORK (March 2) - Merle Haggard can make a case for himself as the hardest working man in country music these days.

<snip>

Haggard is also getting attention for a song he's not even released -- "Hillary," an ode to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in which he declares, that "This country needs to be honest/This country needs to be large/Something like a big switch of gender/Let's put a woman in charge."

"I'm just reacting to the news," explains Haggard, adding that the Clinton campaign camp has been in touch with his representatives. "Never before in history has there ever been a woman anyone seriously thought to be a possible candidate for president. A couple women in the past had that in mind but never had a chance to in.

"(The song) hasn't got past the studio yet. I recorded it and nobody's heard it, but they're talking about it all over the country. It's got me thinking it might be worth putting out there."

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/music/articles/_a/merle-haggard-rocks-new-song-for-hillary/20070302070509990001

Thought this might interest some of you.

[itsmesgd]

1. I think I'll just stay here and drink

great song and a good idea. I saw him and Bob Dylan last year, one of the best shows in years

[Sequoia]

3. In my wildest dreams I would never thought that possible.

He and Bob Dylan. Why, back in the day, those two were at the opposite ends of the musical and political pole.

[rebel with a cause]

4. Haven't you heard.

Dylan says he was not really saying anything political, just writing songs. :cry: My children say that Dylan brags about never telling reporters the truth, so....:shrug:

Haggard says that his "Okie from Muskogee" song was really about his father and his generation and he was not a supporter of the war. In fact he was surprised when people thought he was. :shrug:

It seems I might have been hallucinating during this time and I didn't even do drugs. :7

[Sequoia]

5. I was just a sheltered child so I have an excuse.

I remember old guys hanging out at the courthouse too. There were two water fountains; one for whites, one for blacks. It's such a faint memory as I was only 5 or 6.

[rebel with a cause]

6. On my trip to the south at 15 or 16

(1960/1961 I don't remember which) I had the experience of the two water fountains. Got smacked for drinking out of the wrong one by my sister, afraid we would be arrested. She was afraid someone would think I was doing it in protest and not just an kid who was thirsty and didn't give a care what color the fountain was. ;-)


Here in Illinois we just had the "sundown laws" and signs in the windows that said that service could be refused. I didn't really understand it, since it was never spoke of in my house. ("white denial") But I can say that I (as a teenager) was refused service in several places in our town because my friends and I did not look like we were of the right economical group. I know now that minorities and poor travelers were refused service in most places in our little dinky town. There was one little store on one of the main streets that was friendly to all that came through their door. I do remember my parents talking about this and my father saying that he would stand by this store owner against anyone because of this.

[Sequoia]

7. Well, by cracky step this way....

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. According to bestselling sociologist Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me), "something significant has been left out of the broad history of race in America as it is usually taught," namely the establishment between 1890 and 1968 of thousands of "sundown towns" that systematically excluded African-Americans from living within their borders. Located mostly outside the traditional South, these towns employed legal formalities, race riots, policemen, bricks, fires and guns to produce homogeneously Caucasian communities—and some of them continue such unsavory practices to this day. Loewen's eye-opening history traces the sundown town's development and delineates the extent to which state governments and the federal government, "openly favor white supremacy" from the 1930s through the 1960s, "helped to create and maintain all-white communities" through their lending and insuring policies. "While African Americans never lost the right to vote in the North... they did lose the right to live in town after town, county after county," Loewen points out. The expulsion forced African-Americans into urban ghettoes and continues to have ramifications on the lives of whites, blacks and the social system at large. Admirably thorough and extensively footnoted, Loewen's investigation may put off some general readers with its density and statistical detail, but the stories he recounts form a compelling corrective to the "textbook archetype of interrupted progress." As the first comprehensive history of sundown towns ever written, this book is sure to become a landmark in several fields and a sure bet among Loewen's many fans. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

[rebel with a cause]

9. Yep, it was a whole county.

I don't live there anymore. Left there a long time ago, and lived in NYC. Desperate to find a way to survive a bad marriage and promised help by my father, I returned there with my two children, followed by my then husband. No help was given and I ended up trapped there. Lived there for 15 years, then moved out. Having already divorced my husband, so now it was just my children and me. My children are scarred from their years living in that area, because as Latinos they were not treated too well. The funny thing is that I wanted to leave that area when my children were still small, but my husband would not have it. He still lives there. He is Latino. It is common for him to be called the "N" word. He is also called "one of the good ones". My children, now adults, will not go back there except on rare occasions, even to visit their father. I am almost completely disassociated from most of my family over our differences.

By the way, I have a Masters in Sociology, but do not keep up with the field any more.

[Sequoia]

10. I'm sorry they had to go through that.

I've always tanned easily and have black hair and growing up in the south some people thought I was:

1) Jewish

2) Japenese (WHAT! With my big round eyes?!)

3) The Devil's Daughter (honest, I was called that, heh, heh!)

Then, as an adult I found out a black family had our last name (was in the archives at Salt Lake City) and after my mother died found out my family (on my dad's side) had one slave guy who took our name after the Emancipation Proclamation. We asked our aunt about it and she came right out and told us like it was no big deal. We never, ever heard of it as children. When I find out we had "black cousins" I was quite happy and talked like a new planet had been discovered, much to the squirming and darted looks from other family members. How we found out by delivering some funeral food to a misison run by a guy who went to school with my youngest sister had done some checking up on his own and told us this. That's when we confronted our aunt about it that very day.

[rebel with a cause]

11. You sound a lot like my mother.

She was dark with black hair, had at least two sets of Native American in her ancestors and she looked it. There are three of her children who have brown pigmentation but the rest of us are pretty pasty. Okay, I am ruddy. We cannot trace part of her family, so we are not sure what else she may have had. Her family had "passed" for many years, some called them "white indians". This was understandable since some of them had supposedly escaped from the Trail of Tears. They are on the Cherokee list of names, so we know they were there at the time. As a child she had been called names also, but mainly because she also suffered from poverty.

My father came from the better family. European and middle class. Their pictures as children are very different one from another. But it was my mother's family that had been here the longest. Not only from the Native Americans, but the Europeans on her side started arriving right after the pilgrims. A long history there. No matter what my mother did to me, I loved my mother. With my father, it was a bit harder. Maybe before I die, I will come to terms with my history with him and learn to love him again. They are both deceased.

Oh, my kids are often mistaken for other ethnic groups. My daughter is either asian or latina. My son is either latino or middle eastern. But he was often told by people that they could tell he was partly "black" because of his hair. It is curly, course and wiry. The funny thing is that the texture came from my "white" father and the curliness from either me or my ex husband. By the way, my ex husband came from the Dominican Republic and has a very rich ethnic heritage. It is very possible that my children do have Asian, Middle Eastern, and Tatino in their heritage from their father. They do have African, Caribbean indian and European from him.

[Sequoia]

13. We're all just a mixed bag of tricks, aren't we!

Pure white, dazzling white people....God forgot to bake that batch of dough! Freezer cookies I guess.

[rebel with a cause]

14. Yep. most of us are mixed.

I am one that, like you, is proud of the mixture. Everything/everyone the same is so boring. ;-) Have a good evening. Time for my daughter to come home.

[Sequoia]

16. You too. My little one is coming with her pa to pick me up at work.

[Roland99]

2. It's not that she's a woman, it's that she's a DLC-dandy and a panderer of the worst kind.

[AzDar]

8. 'Zactly! I'm all for having a woman President...just NOT Hillary Clinton.

[Bucky]

17. You're missing the point: if you're against Clinton, you're a sexist. Maybe misogynist too.

Also, if you want to end the war, you hate the troops and are probably too racist against Iraqis to think they can't have a democracy. And if you don't want you kids' school telling your kids how to pray, it's cause you hate religion. You are obviously a Nazi.

[Roland99]

18. But can we be sexy misogynists?

:)

[Dr Fate]

12. I'm just glad Merle seems to lean DEM these days. n/t

n/t

[Dinger]

15. I'm Gonna See Merle, Willie & Ray Price On March 24th

At the Riverside in Milwaukee! I can't wait!!