Posted on 06/14/2002 12:05:31 PM PDT by kattracks
Country star Toby Keith says snooty Canadian anchorman Peter Jennings caused ABC to disinvite him from performing a patriotic hit song on an Independence Day program.
"Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" is, according to USA Today, "an outpouring of grief, anger and frustration Keith wrote in the wake of Sept. 11 and the earlier death of his father. The controversial, patriotic song tells of a veteran who lost his eye in a combat training mission and also features a number of confrontational verses."
"I find it interesting that he's not from the U.S.," Keith said. "I bet Dan Rather'd let me do it on his special."
Jennings even worse than Rather? Well, after all, ABC is the network that recently censored a thank-you to Jesus.
ABC News mouthpiece Cathie Levine tried to play down the uproar.
"They talked to him, but they talked to a lot of people," she said. "There were a lot of factors in play," among them a travel conflict, because Keith already had booked a show in Utah that night, she said. "The whole production is still in the planning stages."
"Courtesy," heading for the top 10 after just five weeks, will appear on Keith's album "Unleashed," due July 23.
"By the time the Fourth of July gets here, that thing'll be No. 1, and it'll sit there for weeks," said Keith, fresh from a USO tour to the Balkans.
"It was a song I was inspired to write," he said, after losing his father six months before Sept. 11. "Nobody wrote an angry American song, and this was one. It was the way everybody felt when they saw those two buildings fall."
Among the lyrics:
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
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Media Bias
War on Terrorism
I wouldn't count on that.
You guys gave him US citizenship and a US broadcasting network from which to preach his doctrines, so stop blaming Canada for him.
Canadian Diplomat: "The Canadian government has already apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions!"
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