Celebrities We Lost 2024

GF

Country musician Toby Keith.

Jenn

@GF Good riddance.

GF

@Jenn I don’t follow country music. What’d he do?

Jenn

@GF A lot of racist bigotry, and super awful politics and war mongering. Not all that abnormal in the US, but still pretty gross none the less.

GF

@Jenn Ah, that’ll do it. Yeah, I’m glad he’s not around to do that any more.

insomniac

@GF He did a song called “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)”

Now, Courtesy Of The Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) wasn’t directly responsible for anything that happened in the wake of the September 11 attack on the WTC, and really Toby Keith wasn’t either. The end of the end of history drove the country insane, and the response was directed by the highest powers of government and abated by national media desperate to avoid being called “un-American” and eager for reels of unscheduled Middle Eastern demolition video to run at primetime. Some people were terrified, some people were furious, some people were all but openly gleeful that we had a new enemy to define ourselves against now that the commies were out of the picture.

Toby Keith didn’t start any of that, and he wasn’t the only person involved in any of that, but he tied his public image and his work to that angry nationalist hornet’s nest that defined America in the 2000s and most definitively with Courtesy Of The Red, White and Blue (The Angry American). That aggressive, jingoistic “with us or against us” warmongering that defined “American” by an eagerness for vengeance while seeing the sort of person caught up in trivialities like personal liberty, the rule of law, or whether the country we were invading had anything to do with the people who attacked us as America’s enemies would be his message and his brand from 2002 on when he released an album that had Courtesy Of The Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) as its opener and closer.

Again, I’m acknowledging that there are a lot of people who did a lot worse in those days than than release Courtesy Of The Red White and Blue (The Angry American), but Toby Keith chose to tie himself so tightly to that ugly part of our history (and a very direct “our” here–you might have inferred that this is a bit of a sore spot, something of a formative period for me) and he did very well off of it. He made it his identity and now he can be one more person for whom it is his legacy.

SpaceKhomeini

Mojo Nixon, 66.

I guess Don Henley outlived him after all.

The punk rock death watch continues.

Aria

@SpaceKhomeini said in Celebrities We Lost 2024:

Mojo Nixon, 66.

I guess Don Henley outlived him after all.

The punk rock death watch continues.

Please stop posting things that make me sad, thanks.

OnceWas

I don’t post much, I’ll grant, although in this case, it’s about someone whom I admired much. Not a deep nor broad body of work, just a simple actor who was a great friend to the fans, played a lovable goofball in one of his major roles, and did not behave badly. One of my favorite go-to “comfort movies” is now a much less strong place for that loss. My heart grieves with his family and friends.

RIP, Flyboy - Dawn of the Dead, 1978