All over this country there is evidence of a takeover. Not a violent, outright takeover, but a far more subtle and insidious one. To do nothing is to accept our demise. I cannot do nothing. This Alan Jackson must be stopped.
I have seen the 10-gallon hats and spangled outfits, the tight blue jeans and rhinestone rings that mark the true believers. I have seen What I Am posters in the recordstore windows, and gone eye to empty eye with a man who wears a mustache, but not a beard. I have never been a holy man, but I know what is right and what is wrong. And this is so very, very wrong. If this is not to be our future, every last one of us must take up arms.
A belief in Alan Jackson has its attractions. I know only too well the abhorrent effects it can produce. “She’s Got The Rhythm (And I’ve Got The Blues)” jingles and jangles right into the wall of your cranium and lodges itself there until you are powerless, swaying down the aisles of Kmart to a 4/4 beat. The scourge of it!
I first heard Alan Jackson while sitting in a dentist’s waiting room. “Don’t Rock The Jukebox” crept into my conscious mind as I paged through an issue of Time. I bolted upright. The young man next to me, 22 at most, was transfixed by the music. I looked down at his feet, tapping away, encased in cowboy boots. I cringed as I caught a glimpse of a future where his kind was the norm, a future where all are united under Alan Jackson’s banner of rural conformity.
This Alan Jackson is supposed to be different and new. Yet it is strangely reminiscent of some ancient evil, some crawling, seething thing that had spawned such devils as Debbie Gibson and Richard Marx.
Don’t tell me that “Chattahoochee” is a harmless, bouncy tribute to the beauty and simplicity of the past. No, this song is something much darker. I do not know what Alan Jackson’s evil message is, but I do not trust his messengers. Their very dress is a uniform of evil. Witness how cowboy boots, which seem so innocent, have sharp, wicked points at the front for tearing flesh and thick, clublike heels for crushing bone. Witness how the bolo tie is nothing more than a stylized assassin’s garrote. And who knows what malicious instruments may be concealed beneath a 10-gallon hat? And the leader of this band is Alan Jackson, with his mane of hair and sinister white T-shirt. Damn him. Damn him to hell!
With his soft “Yes, ma’am”s and “No, sir, I don’t reckon”s, he charms his way into our hearts. But once there, he will work at us from the inside out. He looks so harmless on the cover of A Lot About Livin’ (And A Little ’Bout Love), but lo, he is not. The South cannot be trusted! Like Germany, they were defeated, but bide their time with clandestine plans!
As America’s easily swayed young farmers dance their joyless, grim-faced line dances, we must ask ourselves: Do we want such suspicious people in charge of feeding our nation? Alan Jackson thinks so. Even as we speak, he is amassing cash to marshal a takeover of our weakened Northern cities. He must be stopped. People, I have warned you!
