Been There, Tried That, Lived to Tell

I had never heard of Jason Aldean and wasn’t familiar with his music. That changed when he recorded a song titled Try That in a Small Town. It comes across as a white nationalist anthem, with some critics going so far as to call it “pro-lynching.”

Aldean didn’t write the song he now performs, he mouths lyrics four others composed. He’s not from a small town. He hails from Macon, Georgia, a city of more than a quarter million people. He now calls Nashville home, as do close to 700,000 others. Try fitting all them in a small town.

Aldean’s song not only oozes white supremacy, it advertises ignorance of rural life. Here is a city boy who dresses country, treating small towns as more fashion statement than homeland. He acts like he’s honoring when he’s actually mocking.

With segments of our society unquestionably at each other’s throats, it’s tempting to cast the conflict as taxidermied provincialism colliding with modernity. That temptation is as misguided as it is divisive. Rural, urban an…