You Don't Like the People

Oliver Anthony, Caitlin Campbell, The West Wing and a damn shame

“You don’t like the people” responds Ainsley Hayes, the newly hired Republican strategist within a Democratic White House on the hit TV series, The West Wing. The Bartlett administration was recently fired upon by white supremacists out of West Virginia, both the President and his aides almost died from wounds sustained by the Beretta M9 handguns. Speechwriter Sam Seaborn (played by Rob Lowe) finds himself in an emotional debate with Ainsley about school lunches, and then it veers into gun control policy.

Seaborn tries to shut down the debate, leveraging his righteous indignation over the recent shooting that almost claimed the life of the President and his colleague. Ainsley sees the best in people, but she senses something in her North Carolinian bones about what really motivates Sam Seaborn’s disdain for guns……

Sam: It’s not about personal freedom, it’s just that some people just like guns

Ainsley: Yes they do. But you know what’s more insidious than that? Your gun control position doesn’t have anything to do with personal safety and it’s not about personal freedom. It’s about you don’t like people who do like guns. Think about that….

Two Virginians vs. the Internet

I’ve been thinking about that exchange from West Wing’s second season, which aired nearly 23 years ago. It was brought to mind by the discourse surrounding Oliver Anthony, the Virginia man who just became famous overnight for a song posted online and shared on Twitter by a radio show host. Rich Men North of Richmond took about 48 hours to become the number one song in the country on iTunes and Spotify, with four more of Anthony’s bluegrass tunes taking up spots on the Top 10. His song lit the internet aflame with debate and distrust over the intentions of his lyrics.

Anthony is a literal overnight success. He just started writing music a year or two ago, has played a few open mic nights, and boom…..stardom and scorn.

Is it some kind of neo-Confederate anthem? A working-class ballad? Class-based resentment 101? Populism mixed with racial grievance? You name it…someone wrote about it this week for major media outlets. Conservative pundits and politicians rushed to claim Anthony as one of their own, despite the song bearing no hallmarks of conservatism. Progressives in the media rushed to condemn the song, even though its lyrics and spirit aren’t dissimilar from what you might hear at a Bernie Sanders rally circa 2016. Some populist Democrats threw the song some praise, remembering that they too used to appeal to Appalachian working people, AKA poor whites…..

We know why NYC and Beltway media writers moved to attack Oliver Anthony for his song.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the lyrics. It’s the messenger.

“You don’t like the people”

Admit it, if you’re just seeing this for the first time, you might have a few assumptions about Oliver Anthony based on innate characteristics and the good ol’ boy scenery of his video.

Right-wingers on Twitter did the same kind of thing just days earlier to a Virginian coffee vendor named Caitlin Campbell who does nothing but post friendly messages online about her coffee business.

There was a 24-hour period last week where the girl was viciously attacked online for the baseless suspicion she was some kind of far-left activist….purely because of her short haircut and weight. Turns out Caitlin is a Christian who went to Liberty University in her hometown of Lynchburg, VA. But she looks like the enemy of very-online conservative keyboard warriors. She’s a lovely person who bases her coffee business around the spirit of friendship and goodwill to others. For some reason, it required investigation by a friendly journalist into Campbell in order to call the trolls off.

It’s a damn shame.

We’re better than this. Profiling people. Making assumptions about them. Typecasting them as political enemies based on the way they dress or cut their hair. Or maybe we’re not better than this, but we have to become so.

This the way.

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Read for yourself while you listen to Anthony’s new #1 hit song.

‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Lyrics

I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullsh-t 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 sh-t 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 sh-t 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