[wardaddy]

I doubt "she needed killin" would have elicited the same innocuous sensibility from those who feel as you do.

Imagine Travis Tritt does a whoop it up and holler song with his buddies about killing his wife and then disposing of her body cause she was being mean or cheating....lol...I can see CMT really playing that one up.

No, in reality...men singing about killing their women is usually more somber like Hey Joe or Down by the River.....songs about anger and despair.....and sadness. Nothing remotely like that with Earl....it was more like the Timothy song of lore from the 60s...a joke...only for some.

[Ichneumon]

I doubt "she needed killin" would have elicited the same innocuous sensibility from those who feel as you do. Imagine Travis Tritt does a whoop it up and holler song with his buddies about killing his wife and then disposing of her body cause she was being mean or cheating....lol...I can see CMT really playing that one up.

Don't play a bait and switch... The song involved far more than a man who was "mean or cheating". The key passage is:

Well it wasn't two weeks 
After she got married that 
Wanda started gettin' abused 
She put on dark glasses and long sleeved blouses 
And make up to cover a bruise 
Well she finally got the nerve to file for divorce 
She let the law take it from there 
But Earl walked right through that restraining order 
And put her in intensive care 

The points are a) he wouldn't/couldn't be stopped by the legal system, and b) he just about killed her, and that likely wasn't going to be the last time.

Perhaps you see it as just a "lib thing" that the women in the story took things into their own hands, but I can assure you that there are many cases where similar circumstances led some man (brother, father, friend, etc.) close to the abused party to do likewise, either outright "disappearing" the guy, or at least visiting him with a carload of burly friends carrying baseball bats to "convince" the animal to leave town, and fast.

And the times that they've been caught doing so, the "he needed killin'" defense has rung a strong chord with many juries.

If you don't think that's classic Texan (or "country" in general), you haven't been around here much. And while I don't listen to a great deal of C&W, I've heard enough to know that such a tale would fight right in to the oeuvre, and I'd be amazed if there weren't already several songs out along that theme. So for the aggrieved women to do the honors instead of the "menfolk" isn't really much of a stretch.