The Retort

Scraping the Barrel: The People Versus Lee Greenwood

Tue January 26th, 2010 by Mike Schrage Of The Retort Staff

Boy, oh boy. Have I ever in been a foul mood as of late. I recently asked my esteemed editors Steven “I don’t get paid enough for this shit” Pittenger and Bailey “What do you mean, you need another deadline extension?” Martin how long they needed this edition of ‘STB’ to be, and they waved me off with an unintelligible grunt that seemingly said to me “Go nuts, buddy.” Veteran’s Day came and went, and still I had no concrete topic upon which to muse using the written word. I had ventured to YouTube with the intentions of watching “Red vs. Blue” for the hundredth time until I noticed that one Mr. Lee Greenwood had one of the top viewed videos of the day. Holy balls. Please, not this guy again.

Don’t even bother Googling the name “Lee Greenwood” because all I have to say is “God Bless the USA” and you already know exactly to whom I am referring, since that song is embedded in the brain of nearly every adult American. Now, let me tell you all about this person I have never met, never talked to, and a man whose albums I have never bought. Lee is a marginal county and western singer who had a mega-hit when the first Gulf War kicked off not quite twenty years ago. I was in the fourth grade when this miserable piece of garbage hit the airwaves, and it was easily the biggest thing since those L.A. Gear shoes that had the little lights in the soles.

When that song was played, people found it deep within themselves to stand up at baseball games, tractor pulls, and school assemblies in order to shout the chorus at the top of their lungs, because all of a sudden they were freaking patriots through and through, and they felt the burning need to show it. If you know your history, the United States pretty much rolled over the Iraqi army without too much trouble, which allowed the adults to get back down to the business of doing whatever the hell the adults did in the nineties. And after the hullabaloo died down, Lee Greenwood got real quiet. But, just like HPV, he never went away - he just went dormant.

As I stated above, I don’t know the guy. This being said, I cannot (okay, I can, but I won’t) say for sure that he wasn’t just chomping at the proverbial bit for someone to start some more shit with the United States. He probably found Bosnia to be a huge bummer, since that little operation never really stoked the fires of fair-weather patriotism that we as a nation are so prone to engage in.

But then came a fateful day in September of 2001, after fundamentalist Muslim whack jobs did their hatchet work and thousands of people were dead and troops were being mobilized and families mourned, and the only happy person in the entire country might have been Lee Greenwood. Why? Because his patience had paid off. He was again relevant. I assume he went downstairs, dusted off his Star Spangled nylon windbreaker, pulled out his Sunday good ol’ boy church boots, and called his manager to ask him to stop booking him for birthday parties and family reunions, because Lee Effing Greenwood was ready to hit the state fair circuit again. The American people needed a rock…and that rock was a washed up, one-hit wonder with one crappy bullet remaining in his tired, played-out chamber. Point, click, shoot, and suddenly I found myself in the midst of yet another panic attack.

The worst part was somebody must have fed Mr. Greenwood after midnight, because suddenly we had all these other crappy country and western artists springing up, these Toby Keiths and these Darryl Worleys and these Aaron Tippins and these Martina McBrides and these Alan Jacksons doing their own horrible GBTUSA Version 2.0, because it was suddenly SO important for us to know that they were true patriots. This disturbing trend (with a well-deserved supporting actor nomination to my old friend Jagermeister) directly contributed to my 2002 nervous breakdown. For example, Country Music Television instituted a “Love Your Country” category at their 2001 awards show (but sadly omitted an award for “Shallowest Gene Pool”) and a bunch of people who were genetic and cultural disasters thought it was a grand old idea. Let’s take some really terrible country music, and give an award to the person whose crappy “God Bless the USA” clone sucks the high hard one the most.

Just to recap that, Lee, whose 1984 effort became the theme of the Gulf War, really isn’t living up to the promises he made. I think we need to elect ourselves a representative and go to Branson or Tuscaloosa or whatever state corn dog festival/hayseed barn dance he has himself booked at this weekend, and make him put his money where his mouth is. Although many veterans may disagree, I personally cannot fault Lee for not volunteering in Vietnam, because of a completely legal and understandable 3A hardship deferment. Although Desert Storm came and went, I am sure he had a big show in Reno in ’91, or maybe he was having a yard sale the morning the charges against Uncle Slobodan became public. But Jesus Christ, God, he has had the last eight years to “defend her still today,” and I’ve heard nothing at all from Mr. Greenwood. Seriously - we need to hold this guy to his promises, because we, the American people, are finally ready to call that I.O.U in. The 7th Cavalry needs a break, so pick up an M4, hop in the Humvee, and get crack-a-lackin’.

Want to feel my pain? Then why don’t you go to YouTube and locate the video yourself? Put the kids to bed, get yourself a slice of pie, and hit the “play” button. After doing so, I challenge you to maintain your will to live at the two minute mark, when Lee and the down-home folk are gathered around the picnic table holding hands and singing. Seriously - the budget for this video must have come from a piggy bank and directed by the local 4-H chapter, because there are three major prevalent themes in the video:

1) Stock footage of urban skylines, one of which I swore I saw during the opening credits of “The Golden Girls”

2) People praying as Lee sang

3) Tractors. Honestly. He spends a third of the video on a tractor, either tooling around a field or gazing off into the middle distance, in deep solemn reflection, perhaps imagining the hot tub he was going to buy with blood money from his crappy song.

Then, the video closes with an image of Lee, bearded and decked out in a checkered shirt, leaning out the window if his pickem’up truck, as people like Aunt Flo and the rest of the bologna-eaters enthusiastically waved to him. I swear, that final look he gave them was one of pure smugness, as if to say “That’s right - buy my cassette tapes, dumbass.”

Now that these floodgates of bitterness and self-righteousness are wide open, I would also like to pass along a short little message. Joe and Jane Everyman, this is the voice of reason speaking: If you people pound your chests and get all misty-eyed over that terrible song during Saturday night karaoke, and you don’t run out the next morning and enlist or at least volunteer down at the VA clinic to take injured or aging veterans to their doctor’s appointments, you are an idiot. Rather than identifying and applying true patriotism to your own seemingly-empty lives (and just slightly off topic, when did Darfur stop being hip with the kids? I haven’t heard anything about that activism for a while), some of you would rather co-opt the sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of people who have ever served the greater good in any capacity: military, firefighters, paramedics, teachers, etc for their own self-gratification and sense of communal belonging. You want to be a patriot and not join the military? No problem: pay your taxes, respect the opinions and cultural affiliations of others, and hold your elected officials to a higher standard. Just please stop embarrassing well-adjusted and rational Americans such as myself on an international stage.

Okay, Lee. This goes out to you personally. You might be a super-nice guy, we might actually get along famously; aside from your bad music, I have no axis on which to judge you. Now, obviously you have found your sweet spot, and I understand you fully intend to dry hump that niche until we as a people get over it. Regardless, my argument remains this: most people have no sense of sacrifice or country; they only claim to be patriotic when it suits them and their interests, and that we allow ourselves to be manipulated in the same manner that Furbies repeat whatever we tell them too. And I am sorry Lee, you contribute to this cause.