Apparently Haggard's Fanbase Is Backing Obama

After some un-Country-like hemming and hawing Seattlest decided that the Merle Haggard show was too expensive and we stayed home. Yeah, yeah, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it's the city -- once in a lifetime opportunities come up three or four times a week. Others went and are happy to tell us about it. We are very interested in this event from the evening, though:

Merle played through several of his classics without saying a word. He broke the no-talking rule by relaying an epiphany he had several years ago -- that Hillary Clinton would become President of the United States. And the crowd goes wild ... with BOOing! Merle launched into "Let's put a woman in charge," anyway, much to the very divided response from the audience (Neko's crowd was hooting, hollering, and exclamating their approval, while Merle's crowd booed their facial hair right off).

It's not a new phenomenon: country or folksy populist types getting turned on by their fans when they express an opinion that isn't so comfortable in the sticks, but it seems like it's coming up more and more. The Dixie Chicks are obviously the primary example -- they dissed Texas and its Bush-producing capabilities at a time when their fan base was not about hearing that. We also just read a Vanity Fair article on John Mellencamp who was living in Indiana to be closer to his heartland folk, but when he started speaking out against the war in Iraq the folk rose up and started leaving threatening notes on his house. It is indeed our country, John, now pack that hippie shit the hell out of it.

Half of us feels something like glee when the right figures out that its entertainers do not share its world view, and half of us feels bad for musicians who get booed by a Paramount full of people who paid $50 a head to be there. Oh well, they seem to come out of it okay in the end, and Merle doesn't seem like he's one to take it too hard.