Toby Keith Hits Back at Accusation Song Is Pro-Lynching
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Toby Keith hit back at a recent blog post that derided his 2003 song "Beer for My Horses" as a pro-lynching anthem.
"The song was a hit and the words 'lynch' and 'racism' has never come up until this moron wrote this blog," he said, according to ContactMusic.
The country singer, 47, was on "The Colbert Report" last month to perform "Beer for My Horses," the popular song that inspired a movie of the same name.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Huffington Post blogger Max Blumenthal called the song an "ode to lynching" and said that "Colbert's studio audience clapped to the beat, blithely unaware that they were swaying to a racially tinged, explicitly pro-lynching anthem that calls for the vigilante-style hanging of car thieves and other assorted evildoers."
Click here for Max Blumenthal's blog from the Huffington Post.
Blumenthal cited the lyrics "Grandpappy told my pappy back in my day, son, A man had to answer for the wicked that he'd done, Take all the rope in Texas, Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys, Hang them high in the street," as proof of its racial implications.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He said "during the days when Keith's 'Grandpappy' stalked the Jim Crow South, lynching was an institutional method of terror employed against blacks to maintain white supremacy."
But Keith defended the song, saying: "It's about the old West and horses and sheriffs ... and going and getting the bad guys. It's not a racist thing or about lynching."
"Beer for My Horses," a road trip comedy that stars Keith, Rodney Carrington and Claire Forlani, hits theaters on Friday.
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