Chely Wright - "Bumper Of My SUV"

I can't watch it - I didn't want to download some stupid "digital rights management" upgrade in order to see it.

Donna B. in Seattle had some things to say about it over this weekend when I was up visiting donut christ. She wasn't thrilled.

anyway, i may well be "predictable," but from the SUV on down, that was hardly a random reference (as spencer's reaction to the video ought to make clear)...and for whatever it's worth, i submitted my country music poll ballot to the nashville scene yesterday, before i saw this thread; here's how my ballot ended:

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST VIDEOS OF 2004:
1. Big & Rich - Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)
2. Montgomery Gentry - You Do Your Thing
3. Shedaisy - Passenger Seat

COUNTRY MUSIC's THREE MOST FASCIST ASSHOLES OF 2004:
1. Joe Nichols (for "If Nobody Believed in You")
2. Montgomery Gentry
3. Chely Wright (for "The Bumper of My S.U.V.")

I figured you guys would be thrilled about a country song that makes it clear that the singer does not give full-on support for the war. I don't see what's fascist about this.

welp chuck, I'm bored and in need of entertainment, so enlighten me with how your reconcile calling people fascist assholes with admiring their expressions of fascist assholery.

Chuck, you've seen the Joe Nichols video, right? That was the first thing I saw on VH-1 Country (which I switched to in resignation right after they called Florida!).

Dude, she drove all around the ENTIRE WORLD in an SUV. That's fucked.

She should write songs about THAT.

That f*cking look and point he gives to the woman in the limo! What an evil misogynist. I hope he chokes on his hypocrisy.

Talking about Gentry there. Joe Nichols is just lame.

Um, nevermind Chuck. For some reason (blind seething hatred probably) I could only read the Montgomery Gentry part of your list.

Just because I find something so powerful I can't take my eyes off it doesn't mean I agree with it, Shakey. It helps that the music kicks so hard, too, and that the video is a better depiction of what happened on November 2 than anything else in music this year. That doesn't mean I'd invite Montgomery Gentry to eat dinner at my house, but just because I hate what they stand for doesn't mean I have to hate their music, obviously. (The lyrics, in a way, are more libertarian than fascist -- the chorus is "you do your thing I do mine." But the video makes me wonder how much they believe that, just like Chely's flaunting of her gas guzzler, and her deceitful equating of the war in Iraq with our "safety" and "freedom" here, not to mention her deceitful equating of people pissed off enough about the war to give flip her the bird with elitist rich people who send their kids to private school -- which, sorry Kenny, in the current environment absolutey helps condone the march toward facsicm even if it's too chickenshit to jump in whole hog like Montgomery Gentry do in their video -- make me wonder how many questions she's actually been asking about the war her brother's in. I mean, if she has questions, why the hell don't we hear them? As somebody pointed out upthread, she is not supporting her brother with that song, or that vehicle for that matter. And I say this as somebody who not only has been a fan of hers in the past, but as somebody who served four years in the military in the past as well, and somebody who knows plenty of SUV owners first-hand. I have every right to be pissed off about the song. And I am. And I'm even more pissed off about that scary-assed Montgomery Gentry video, but that doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge a masterful and completely audacious piece of propaganda when I see it. Even if I think it's completely full of shit. I mean, I *wish* Eminem's "Mosh" video was that powerful. Sadly, it's not.)

xp. obv. And I gotta go.

I understand Chuck's point, but I don't think that video was directed by Leni Riefenstahl. I guess the misunderstanding comes from placing it under the "best" category, as opposed to "most fascinating".

Also, the "hate" in my last post is of course directed at Gentry (and not Chuck, obviously).

"I guess the misunderstanding comes from placing it under the "best" category, as opposed to "most fascinating"."

Yeah, precisely. I would equate "best" with something I actually enjoy hearing/watching (which, by definition, I would also find fascinating, powerful, etc.)

Can we also talk about the spelling of Chely Wright's name? WTF?!

must be short for something.

Cheloise, perhaps.

Actually, bizarrely (or maybe not) (I know I said I was gonna go; I will, I'm almost done packing my stuff up), the video that "You Do Your Thing" most brings to mine for me is Laibach's great quasi-fascist (though allegedly anti-fascist) "Life is Life" -- especially when Montgomery is standing there singing, with the stars and stripes and Constitution and purple mountain's majesty behind him, just like the alps and elks behind Laibach's brown shirts in their video. The thing gives me chills, and if any music will remind me 20 years from now how fucked up life got in 2004, seeing the MG video will. It totally gets this sickness dead on, from the horseshit about liberal elitist hypocrites eating their meat in those fancy restaurants while they look askance down their snobby urban noses at M and G and their kids returning from the hunting trip on down. And no, "best video" does not mean "most morally upstanding"; I'm not very good at judging music that way. But I have to admit that do get off on the video, somehow. There is something about its power, and the music's physical power, that I find hard to resist, and that makes the thing seem more dangerous, which makes it better. Maybe that makes me a masochist, who knows. But then again, it's hardly the first time that awesomely hard-rocking music has flirted with evil, and it won't be the last.

Dang. Now that's a paragraph I wish I could have written.

Even with all the criticisms, I can't hate on it. Made me think a lot about how often I've looked down on cars and houses with American flags on them.

you're right, i think she should stop writing songs and just enlist.

My friends made a response song titled

"Ive got the sticker of the SS Troopers on the bumper of my Mini Cooper"