July 21, 2023 11:47 AM UTC

Boebert Leaps To Controversial Video's Ill-Advised Defense

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• by: Colorado Pols

CBS4 Denver reports on the latest impact area for Colorado’s foremost controversy-seeking missile, Rep. Lauren Boebert–this time leaping into the debate over a new video from conservative country music star Jason Aldean shot in front of a Tennessee courthouse with, to say the least, a problematic history.

Colorado’s Republican congresswoman recently joined Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in defending pop-country singer and guitarist Jason Aldean, while criticizing what she called censorship over his recent song “Try That in a Small Town.”

The music video for Aldean’s song was pulled from CMT this week over some of its themes and facts surrounding the video itself. The song was released in May, but according to Billboard, the accompanying video wasn’t released until July 14 and had been in heavy rotation through Sunday before it was pulled on Monday.

“The iTunes charts have spoken – Jason Aldean’s ‘Try That In A Small Town’ is number one,” Boebert tweeted to her 2.6 million followers Wednesday. “Whenever they try and censor us, we only go stronger. Time for CMT to get the Bud Light treatment.”

And Tuesday, she tweeted that Aldean, “put everything that is on our minds to music. Everyone needs to listen to this song and just reflect on how far this great nation has fallen — but realize that WE THE PEOPLE can get it all back and MORE!” [Pols emphasis]

NBC News takes a look at the controversy underlying both the lyrics of Aldean’s song and the location for the video shoot:

Released on YouTube on Friday, the video for the song, “Try That in a Small Town,” features Aldean and his band performing in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, the same site where a Black teenager was lynched in 1927.

Henry Choate, 18, was accused of assaulting a white 16-year-old girl. He was jailed, but a mob of hundreds of white people kidnapped him from his cell. He was tied to the back of a car and dragged across town, and eventually hanged in front of the Maury County Courthouse.

Choate was one of at least 20 Black men in Maury County to be lynched or kidnapped and presumably killed by the KKK or white mobs, according to local historian Elizabeth Queener.

And although it’s true that the word “lynch” does not appear in the song’s lyrics,

Aldean’s video also includes scenes that seem to feature footage of Black Lives Matter protests, as Aldean sings lyrics such as “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face/ Stomp on the flag and light it up/ Yeah, ya think you’re tough.”

And invites the listener to “try that in a small town.”

To summarize, we have a song that celebrates vigilante justice, shot just by coincidence we’re to believe in front of the site of an infamous historical lynching. Despite invoking disrespect toward cops the song is plainly not about police maintaining law and order, it’s about “good old boys” who dare you to see “how far you get down the road” if you commit various misdeeds like burning a flag. Put this all together and you don’t come to an ambiguous conclusion about this song’s message.

This is the history Lauren Boebert wants to “get back and MORE?”

We can’t speak for Maury County Tennessee, but Colorado towns of all sizes will take a hard pass.