Country musician Jason Aldean inadvertently summoned an online mob after posting a music video criticizing tangible mobs — the situation is now a cocktail of Twitter fingers and Molotovs. The song’s title, “Try That in a Small Town,” doesn’t fuss much with subtlety, and the music video, which was quickly pulled from Country Music Television (CMT), is set before an illumined courthouse shrouded in the smoke of civic unrest. Recordings of armed burglaries, assaults, and women spitting in the faces of police officers interpose every few seconds as Aldean hollers suggestively about how such behavior wouldn’t play in a small town.
“Try That in a Small Town” is a “f*** around and find out” anthem in A-flat major. It’s a refutation of the permissiveness toward criminality that cities such as Portland, Chicago, and Los Angeles have exhibited over the past several years. Aldean includes lines such as: “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / Well, that s*** might fly in the city, good luck / Try that in a small town.” To you and me, those all sound like country-pride one-liners we’d hear down at Schmidt’s Corners bar in Iola after the car show. But to progressives, the song, and its attendant video, is a dog whistle for lynchings and other racial violence.
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