OK, I’m going to do it. I’m defending Oliver Anthony and his song “Rich Men North of Richmond”. Come at me.
(** Step 1: yes I'm aware, that's his stage name. **)
When the song went viral, Republicans and Conservatives latched onto it, particularly its tone of disgust with all politicians. Democrats and Centrist Liberals latched onto the verse complaining how fat people on Welfare bought Fudge Rounds and concluded that his disdain for politicians meant he was a Right-winger toadying up to the factory bosses. Online Leftists quickly followed up with memes referencing that latter judgment. I'm going to discuss all of that.
As time went on, cooler heads (whom I will cite later) prevailed on the Left. But I still see quite a few of my friends passing around the Left memes claiming Oliver Anthony wants to ingratiate himself to the capitalist class, or that he’s racist and prejudiced against fat Welfare recipients. I’d like to ask my friends, who might still be posting these memes, to dig a little deeper and reconsider. Everyone, both sides, has pigeon-holed him too hastily.
For one thing, no one has bothered to mention that he has a great voice and a pretty good rhythm, he's talented. And he said on his blog that in hindsight he wished he'd phrased things a bit better when writing the song. Perhaps, give him a little time to write some more informed lyrics, and let’s see what happens.
He’s said that he turned down an $8 million record deal and there is plenty of evidence that many are looking to pay handsomely for his services. One could make an argument that everything was a ploy to get a bidding war started over himself. We have no way of knowing. It will be extremely interesting to see what he does with his fame over the next six months or so.
I think it's pretty clear that a lot of the online Left accusing him of toadying up to bosses or using racist dog whistles have not researched one other word besides the song itself (if they've even listened all the way through). I think this is a case where it really behooves us to consider the entire opus of what he wrote, said, or sang before he became famous. I think pigeon-holing him based on nothing but one song would be a mistake on the part of the Left.
There's a good argument to be made that his nearly overnight viral fame was engineered by the Republican/conservative media apparatus. Maybe so. But if that is true, they have misread him as much as the Left.
I have long maintained that the strict Left/Right division becomes less and less true as time goes on. Look up Oliver Anthony’s previous songs, before he went viral, and his own comments and interviews he’s given about Rich Men North of Richmond. He doesn’t fit neatly into the Left/Right division and he doesn’t deserve to become a partisan political football. He’s a bit more complex than that.
Many of you, my friends on the Left, may have heard by now -- that when the Republican Party played his song during their first Presidential Debate, Oliver Anthony publicly responded that the people on the Republican stage were the Rich Men North of Richmond that he was singing about.
“That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden. You know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song is written about the people on that stage and a lot more, not just them, but definitely them.”
But neither is he a Democrat. As he explains, politicians on both sides of the partisan aisle have failed the people of rural Virginia, his region. This is especially frustrating as rural people watch the fat and well-connected bureaucrats near the nation's capital, living not too far away from them. So speaking of fat...
“Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.”
He explained in the follow-up video blog, linked below, what he meant by the fudge rounds lyric. He disapproves of the fact that 40% of food stamps are spent on food that is classified as "snacks". But the reason he disapproves of it is not some Reaganesque stereotype about welfare queens, but rather because the people around him are in the middle of what was once the most productive farmland in America. The breadbasket of the United States before California took over the title. Now all the farms around him are either exporting their food or growing corn for corn syrup ( junk food substrate). In other words, why are people getting paid to eat junk food (which makes them unhealthy and obese) when this farmland around him could be raising some of the healthiest food in existence?
That's the question he asks when he juxtaposes "obese milking welfare" right away with "folks in the street, ain't got nothing to eat". He's not the first to point out, (in his comments, not explicitly in the song alas) that it's common for those on government aid to buy junk food because you get more quantity and calories for your buck than more expensive yet healthier real food. Even if you are literally surrounded by productive farmland. It's a subtle point, and he admits that he could have phrased it better. Hopefully in the future he will.
He explains in his blog that “the government takes people who are needy and dependent and makes them needy and dependent.” Let me elaborate a little, at the risk of putting a few words into his mouth.
He is referring to the “gap”, for example, as a single mother of two making a yearly income of $12,500, you are eligible for government benefits -- but if you happen to find a job that pays you $12,501 of income, your benefits get taken away, you stand all alone, and you are much worse off than somebody who is making half your salary. This is a significant barrier to getting people working – why get a better job when you end up in a worse place than you started?
It's a valid criticism. A Left solution would be to phase out government assistance gradually, as one's income goes up, instead of cutting it off cold turkey. That's not how the system is set up right now. Ideally, the Left solution would also include things like universal healthcare and cheap effective public transportation so that poor people have less of a material barrier between them and economic stability. Certain key Democratic politicians, may I remind you, are all dead-set against those things. The Right would say, eradicate all government assistance in the first place. It is not clear where Oliver Anthony falls in that debate. However, according to his own words, he is not satisfied with the current system.
I think Oliver and his fans are well aware that it’s practical and logical to take $200 per month in Welfare, not working at all when the best job you can find pays you only $240 per month for a month of backbreaking labor. He explained that his enemy is not just the politicians, but also the miserly bosses who don’t pay a fair, living wage.
In short, I think the evidence is there that he is on the side of poor rural people. And that's who the Left, the real Left not the Democrats, should be allied with.
Leftist voices I trust (to a relative degree), such as Beau, Due Dissidence, and Hasan Piker, point out – if the Left wants to make any permanent changes, we are necessarily going to have to ally ourselves with people who make jokes about fat people eating Fudge Rounds. It is unavoidable, or else we relegate ourselves to critiquing from the sidelines. The important thing is to ally with people like Oliver Anthony, who are leading the working classes to demand better wages.
And, as Hasan asks, if he didn’t believe this stuff, why would he denounce the Republican Debate or explain his views on welfare? He’d be guaranteed a lucrative money seat on the Right-wing gravy train if he’d simply done as many others have done before him, from Dennis Miller to Kyle Rittenhouse, to Kid Rock, Toby Keith et al., and just sang a bastardized version of Pete Seger for the reactionary crowd. He’d make big bank if he hadn’t spoken up about his true opinions. If that was his motivation, there was no reason for him to endanger that status by speaking up. He could have rewritten "Rich Men North of Richmond" over and over again for decades and guaranteed himself the economic stability that has been systematically denied to his peers.
But instead, he spoke up, and he spoke out.
Clearly, the guy is religious, and that likely turns off a lot of the atheist scientific Left. But let’s just take a moment and see, as Beau puts it, whether he believes in the Biblical Jesus as opposed to the Republican Jesus. Supporting his music would go a long way towards winning his religious neighbors and co-workers towards our causes. And the left shouldn’t ignore the strong tradition of socialism and liberation theology that exists within the church.
Some of his newfound Republican listeners have already begun to reject him over recent comments celebrating the diversity of America, with many more likely to follow. Movement conservatism mainly traffics in black-and-white dichotomies and for most of them, it's “If you ain’t with us, you against us,” as the former President once said. But a lot of Oliver’s working-class listeners aren’t going to abandon him and will keep listening even as the politicos on the Right disown him. I would really like to see the Left treat him as an ally who could be very useful for a project of solidarity.
Yes, Oliver Anthony hasn’t “done the reading,” as the stuck-up Marxist Purists would say. His political theory isn’t particularly coherent. But it seems like his heart is in the right place, and he’s a good example of somebody we could make common cause with. If the Left will support him – and his working-class neighbors and fans – as the Right-wing drops him, I think we will have scored a major victory.
Some citations:
Oliver Anthony video blog --
You can listen to his explanation and judge for yourself. He says he'll parse all his song lyrics if he has to. As he says in this blog, if you listen to his songs from last year, long before he went viral, his lyrics are unambiguously on the side of poor people, not the bosses.
Beau of the 5th Column
Hasan Piker
Due Dissidence
.
Midwestern Marx
Thomas Daulton is an engineer who knows his tolerances and dabbles a bit too much in politics.
I love that you said this because I was watching all these memes fly around and I was feeling very confused.
And I am all too familiar with the single mom scenario. I have a great job but I had to cut it down to part-time because the health insurance plans I was offered to cover my daughter and I would have broke me.
I still think Oliver Anthony is, if not a closeted MAGA Chud, somebody who thinks similarly scrambling to say "Some of My Best Friends Eat Fudge Rounds!", so he doesn't get snowed under in a wave of constructive criticism (and lower royalties and sales!) like on like Jason Aldean did.
My kid brother sounds a lot like him—"I'm not a Republican any more! I agree Trump's an asshole and a con man!" But that sure doesn't stop him from mocking my ex-wife's niece for her feminism, making homophobic "jokes" despite being bisexual himself, and having lost his last job because he was making jokes about "Messicans"...in the hearing of his Hispanic foreman. 🤦♂️