Oliver Anthony shouldn’t be surprised that Republicans love the “rich guys north of Richmond.”
It’s been a “good” couple of months for music that can only be played on a dog whistle. On the heels of Jason Alden’s racism poem “Try It in a Small Town” was Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North Richmond”. Sample lyric for the latter: “Well, my God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and 300 pounds/taxes you shouldn’t be paying for your bags of candy rounds.”
Yes, it’s an old anti-poor song, and it’s not very well written. However it has been Everywhere. It shot to the top of the Billboard Top 100 despite Anthony being a newcomer to the music scene. It has over two million views on YouTube. Marjorie Taylor Green he likes it. And now it runs, as expected, During the Republican debates.
Anthony is unhappy with Republicans using his song. The man who sang the words “Lord, we’ve got people on the street with nothing to eat/Take care of fat milkers” wants everyone to know that – guess what – he Not political. to publish YouTube video A few days ago he said, “The only thing that bothers me is seeing people get political with this. I’m disappointed to see it. It’s annoying to see people on the conservative news trying to identify with me, like I’m one of them.”
But if you put out a song featuring what’s essentially a bunch of right-wing talking points tied together — the song also has the lyric “I wish the politicians were looking for miners/Not just minors on an island somewhere,” which QAnon types would definitely Take only one way – what do you expect to happen?!
That Anthony doesn’t see this indicates that he already has a very poor understanding of what life is like for people in America who don’t look like him.
The percentages that Anthony focuses on
In his video, here’s what Anthony had to say regarding the “welfare of obese milkers”: “This refers to a news article I read earlier this summer, that teenage children in Richmond lack meals because their parents can’t afford to feed them They are “not at school for the cafeteria lunch.” He continued: “Meanwhile, I think 30% or 40% of the food bought with EBT falls into a category like snacks and soft drinks. I think 10% was spent on soda. And I want to say that 20% or 30% is spent on fast food.”
And in May of this year, ABC4 News published a fact-check about this issue. In 2016, the Department of Agriculture found that 22.6% of SNAP/EBT households’ grocery bills are spent on fast food and candy. butAs the news outlet notes, “The data used in the study only captured transactions completed at a select group of retail outlets and is therefore not a complete representation of the whole picture.” The study also found that non-SNAP households spend 19.7% of their grocery budget. out on fast food.
Furthermore, what is the relationship between one person who spends welfare money on junk food (which is still food, after all) and a child who misses a meal? both of them They must eat, and the government must provide them with the means to do so if they cannot. For all his talk of “rich men,” Anthony seems to think the real enemy is the poor “5-foot-tall, 3,300-pound guy whose candy shots put the meal straight out of a kid’s mouth.” The truth is much more complex than that, but Anthony just wants to attack someone.
Eat their faces, not mine!
Perhaps this is why Republicans embraced Anthony’s song so enthusiastically: It contains no sympathy, just a lot of criticism and finger-pointing. And in his YouTube video, after talking about the percentages of EBT money that are spent on junk food, Anthony added, “It’s not these people’s fault.” Well my friend, that certainly doesn’t appear in your song, where you refer to it a lot He is their fault, and that your plight is theirs too.
And if you blow a dog whistle that way, you get dogs. Or in this case (in the words of one Fastest political tweets ever) – You will get a face-eating leopard. And I’m sorry, Anthony, but trying to distract them with candy shots won’t work.
(Featured image: screenshot, Oliver Anthony)
Do you have a tip we should know? (email protected)