On Thursday night’s edition of The Ed Show on MSNBC, "Ed Schultz threw down a threat-down on hawkish, jingoistic country crooners like Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood ," wrote Adam Gold of Nashville Scene, "or as he called 'em, ‘fun-lovin', American rednecks in Nashville, Tennessee."
Schultz "put the Music Row machine on notice — jestingly expressing his hankering to hear a patriotic anthem lauding President Obama and the Navy Seals for toe-tagging Osama bin Laden." You can tell Schultz was mocking patriotic country singers because he didn’t ask Steve Earle or the Dixie Chicks for their help. Ed wanted a "gutsy call" song:
I mean, I think I can say that we -- with tremendous confidence -- that this was a brave mission based on a gutsy call by President Obama. I mean, all of us, except maybe one portion of America I'm waiting on. And that's Nashville, Tennessee.
You remember these country western singers that just loved to make all these patriotic songs, Lee Greenwood and he's proud to be an American? Toby Keith, come on, dude. Give me a song, man. We took down the number one terrorist in the world. Does it have to be a Republican president all the time?
Schultz then suggested country stars don’t like Obama because of his political party, his international upbringing, his Ivy League degrees, and his skin color:
President Barack Obama, he waves the flag, too. Come on, Nashville! Give me a song! If you won't do it, we'd like to hear from our viewers. If you have a patriotic song or even a rendition of another song already in the can and ready to go, you can go to our blog at Ed.MSNBC.com and leave a link to it.
We'll check them out and maybe even play it on the air, because I think President Obama and the SEALS deserve a song from those fun loving American rednecks in Nashville, Tennessee who love Democratic presidents, and it doesn’t matter who the president is, what color he is, what his background is, what his education is, he’s an American. Give me a song.
Schultz didn't consider that Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" may be a favorite at GOP rallies, but it's not a Republican song. Keith's post-9/11 anthem "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" already works. It wasn't a tribute to Republicans, and really fits now:
Justice will be served
And the battle will rage
This big dog will fight
When you rattle his cage
And you’ll be sorry that you messed with
The U.S. of A.
'cause we'll put a boot in your ass
It's the American way
Nobody's heard that playing on MSNBC in the last nine years or so. Brent Bozell could remind Ed that ABC's Peter Jennings scratched Toby Keith from Fourth of July festivities for his "mean" song. The Washington Post huffed that Keith loved numbers that "tread the line between rascally and mean," and his "meanest" song was "Courtesy," which "unabashedly glorifies the bombing of Afghanistan" and "traffics in vivid, simple shades of black and white, good and evil."
Why shouldn't Schultz demand that "peace"-loving folk singers give us a pro-Obama anthem now?
