Posted on 11/23/2016 9:28:12 AM PST by TigerClaws
Three days after the election, my wife and I were shopping at the Fairway Market in Red Hook, Brooklyn. For those unfamiliar with it, Fairway is a less corporate, more co-op version of Whole Foods, offering pretty produce and exotic cheeses that don’t come cheap. The mood in the store was glum. As in most of Brooklyn, people stared ahead, moving slowly, still in shock from the political earthquake of Tuesday night.
After getting our Brazilian Arabica ground for drip (I know, I should really use a French Press), Libby and I walked towards the organic maple syrup. That’s when it started. I suppose there had been music playing in the store, but I hadn’t noticed until a familiar guitar lick pierced the air and a soft voice said, “Turn it up.”
Libby and I both stopped and looked at each other. “Seriously?” said my wife, a very disappointed Clinton supporter. She started gripping her soft Tomme Crayeuse a little too hard. By the time Ronnie Van Zant’s drawl started in with “Big wheels keep on turnin’,” everyone in the store was standing in shock. Brows were furrowed, people mumbled to each other. The song seemed to get louder as one of those New York moments happened, when everyone was thinking the exact the same thing.
A woman in her fifties, wearing a Love Trump Hates button, turned to her Brooklyn-bearded husband and said loudly, “This is unbelievable!” She found the nearest store clerk, a young woman in a green apron who was staring up at the ceiling, looking for the invisible speakers blaring this message from the other America. “This is so inappropriate,” the woman said. “Can we turn this off?” The City of Homes, Cafés, and Clinton
Brooklyn was the epicenter of the Clinton campaign. Throughout the summer and fall in Brooklyn Heights, you could see young staffers near the campaign headquarters: expensive coffee in hand, eyes bright, ready to tackle the future. Cafés turned into phone banks, where you could buy a croissant and make a few calls to flyover country. Buttons, banners, and bumper stickers were everywhere.
As the election grew near, confidence was overflowing. A big victory was on the horizon for Lena Dunham and the new Brooklyn. This ground zero for upscale progressivism was ready for a party; white male supremacism was about to be crushed beneath a professional high heel.
Fittingly, perhaps, the only exception to Clinton mania in Brooklyn was in the southern part of the borough. In Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst, big trucks could be seen with “Hillary for Prison” and “Make America Great Again” detailed on their back windows. This is not the Brooklyn of “Girls” or “The Slap.” It is the Brooklyn of “Blue Bloods,” the home of cops and firemen, plumbers and construction workers immune to the appeal of a President Clinton. These are people who listen to Skynyrd, and not ironically. Everything Old Is New Again
I couldn’t stop laughing as the Fairway patrons tried to continue shopping with “Sweet Home Alabama” blasting in the background. And in retrospect, the moment was a perfect encapsulation of a very old fight within America
The song itself was written in response to two songs by Neil Young: “Southern Man,” and “Alabama.” It was 1974, and as the Civil Rights era faded into history, the South and Southern rock was reasserting pride in their culture and way of life.
Last year, “Garden and Gun” talked to Gary Rossington, the last surviving member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, about the creation of the song. He said:
“Neil Young had “Southern Man,” and it was kind of cutting the South down. And so Ronnie just said, We need to show people how the real Alabama is. We loved Neil Young and all the music he’s given the world. We still love him today. It wasn’t cutting him down, it was cutting the song he wrote about the South down. Ronnie painted a picture everyone liked. Because no matter where you’re from, sweet home Alabama or sweet home Florida or sweet home Arkansas, you can relate.”
For his part, Young would eventually agree that he had painted the South with too broad a brush. In his 2012 autobiography “Waging Heavy Peace,” Young would write, “My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.”
If “accusatory and condescending” sounds familiar, it should. Along with being called deplorable, Trump’s supporters (of which I was not one) have been treated in a way that is rare in American politics, and deeply troubling. The campaign that emerged from Brooklyn didn’t just attack the politics of people who don’t live in big cities. It attacked their entire way of life, and promised it was dying. Ignoring It Doesn’t Make It Go Away
When the angry older woman with the anti-Trump button asked the clerk to turn off the song, the younger woman looked at her sympathetically and said, “I don’t know how.” In that moment, something seemed to click.
Of course, this woman thought that “Sweet Home Alabama” could just be turned off. After all, we can block out things we disagree with. We can unfriend people on Facebook, block them on Twitter, and decide not to let their negativity be a part of lives. For many progressives, this is the key to wellness.
But turning off Skynyrd doesn’t make it go away. Somewhere in the land where the stars still shine, it plays on, whether you hear it or not. The shock and despair in Brooklyn over Hillary Clinton’s unfathomable defeat comes in no small part because her denizens refused to hear the rumblings of an America they chose to ignore.
Just like a hillbilly band rocketing to the top of the national charts, Donald Trump has awakened the right sort to the fact that they do not control everything. For Trump and his supporters, the protests and challenges to the Electoral College should be seen as another victory. Not only did they win, they are being heard—even in Brooklyn.
They also have great music playing in the stores.
The Brooklynites, including the writer’s wife, have mental illness. It’s a form of schizophrenia to have that sort of association with a song.
It’s funny to hear it playing in the background during breaks in the action of nationally televised NHL games in Canada. LOL.
Thin-skinned and no sense of humor. Down here just about everybody knows the lyrics to Charlie Daniels’ Uneasy Rider, we’re not so insecure that we can’t laugh at ourselves...
It also has one of the greatest stanzas in a rock song — the one that begins: “In Birmingham they love the gov’ner ...”
Thought you might enjoy this. ;-)
Montgomery’s got the answer.
I always hated Sweet Home Alabama, not for the sentiment but there was better music done by these guys.
It’s surprising just how many outside the US know and love Sweet Home Alabama. Sing along, absolutely thrill to it. Strikes a chord, especially among the historically dispossessed. But then, so does the battle flag.
*sigh* You young kids just don’t get it.
In Cali we have Trader Joes, which I call Hippie-Mart.
While it does have good, interesting food choices available, and the stores are clean, the staff friendly- many of their customers have a a sort of hippie vibe to them, and would probably react the same way the people in this article did if Sweet Home Alabama played there after the election.
Good article.
I crack up every time I watch that.
Good thing they didn’t play “God Bless America,” the liberals would have had to rush out and burn a flag.
I think Sweet Home Alabama ought to BE the national anthem. Talk about the ultimate FU to New York.
Lol
Heartrending homage to night Dixie truly died a little
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T8-cWwuMq3o
I’m driving across cold northern Indiana last nite on 31 south headed home
Always such a sad song
Ronnie Van Zant and Neil Young were friends. Here's a song written by Young for Van Zant to record. He died before recording it.
- Roll Tide -
lmao Amazing they didn't know they were being trolled at that point.
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