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Sometimes…change is good.

Sometimes…it isn’t.

FoxNews.com’s Entertainment Division reported earlier this week that

On Wednesday, the former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate was announced as a new board member of the charitable arm of the group that runs the annual CMA Awards and CMA Festival.



But prominent music industry leaders swiftly criticized Huckabee’s appointment, including some who singled out his support for gun rights and traditional family values. In his resignation letter to the CMA Foundation, Huckabee called his critics bullies, but said he was resigning to end an “unnecessary distraction” for the foundation. “If the industry doesn’t want people of faith or who hold conservative and traditional political views to buy tickets and music, they should be forthcoming and say it,” Huckabee wrote. “Surely neither the artists or the business people of the industry want that.” Huckabee also sounded a note of defiance on Twitter on Thursday night.

Gov. Mike Huckabee on Twitter Got home from 28 hour trip from Taipei that lasted longer than my time on CMA Foundation board. Read my FULL letter of resignation and see that “Hate Wins” and bullies care about themselves than kids needing music. https://t.co/uDzMD6NbFc

The 51st Annual CMA Awards, held in November, included numerous jabs at President Donald Trump.

The Former Governor of the great state of Arkansas is exactly right.

The East Cost/Left Coast Power Brokers have done to Country Music exactly what they did to Classical Liberalism.

They have jettisoned Traditional American Faith and Values for a shallow hedonistic conflagration of drinkin’, cheatin’, partyin’, and Liberal Politics, changing an entire music genre into something that it never was and was never meant to be.

On this Mississippi March Morning, just a few miles away from Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, I sit here reflecting on the influence which actual Country Music had on my young life, growing up with my Mother and Daddy.

Every family, to this day, has rituals that they observe like clockwork.

Our Saturday Night Ritual was to eat homemade hamburgers, spaghetti, or crockpot beans off of TV trays and watch Hee Haw, the syndicated country music variety show, out of Nashville, which starred Buck Owens, Roy Clark, and a “cast of thousands”.

The snotty folks up in the Northeast Corridor and Hollyweird never could figure out what made that “hick show”, that lasted 25 years, so popular.

After all, it was about traditional American Values, love of God and Country, respecting our American Musical Heritage, and featured talented performers who wrote songs, sang, played their own instruments, loved and appreciated their fans, and actually behaved like average Americans.

Plus, they had the good grace and common sense to keep their private lives, private.

At this time in our country’s history, when morality has become relative and ethics situational, we find our hearts crying out to hear something that will soothe our troubled souls.

Instead, we find synthesized, mass-produced Pop Music and “so-called” Country Music, actually more Pop Music, manufactured in New York City (pronounced like they do in the Pace Salsa Commercials), advocating meaningless one-night stands and encouraging the debasement of the human soul, instead of its ability to rise above any obstacle in its path that might hinder individual achievement.

With all of today’s over-produced, under-written Pop and Country-Pop Music flooding the airwaves of both broadcast and satellite radio, Americans my age wonder where all the great Country Songwriters and Performers have gone to?

What is happening to country music reflects a lot about the culture we live in. Artists who actually lived what they sung about like Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, The Statlers, Jim Ed Brown, Porter Waggoner, Hank Williams, Jr., Randy Travis, Jeannie C. Riley, and Elvis Presley have been replaced by fashion models and wannabe rock stars.

Please don’t get me wrong.

There are still Americans performing country music. Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Reba, Martina McBride, Clint Black, Brooks and Dunn (who are back together and appearing with Reba in Las Vegas), Rascal Flatts, among others, are still attempting to keep the spirit of Country Music alive.

However, in our culture of fast lives, fast food, and instant gratification, superficiality sells. That’s how we got stuck for 8 long years with Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

It is easier and more profitable for a record company to sell someone who looks good and can sing a little, or to release a country music album made by a fading rock star, than it is for them to market someone who is unbelievably talented and writes their own songs, but who resembles your next door neighbor.

Remember the Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison Country Music CD fiascos?

No? I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t admit it, either.

Can you imagine Hank Williams, Sr., Patsy Cline, or Buck Owens trying to get a record deal today?

I’m sorry Mr. Williams. Your vocalization is way too twangy and you drink way too much. “I Saw The Light”? What kind of song is that? A song about redemption? Get real. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”? Who Cares? You’re just not marketable.

Ms. Cline, we can’t use you. You look like somebody’s next door neighbor. Mr. Owens, what is the “Bakersfield sound” that you’re talking about? That won’t get any airtime in New York City. “Act Naturally”? That’s a song? Next thing you know, you’ll tell me that the Beatles will want to record it.

Now you know why Toby Keith formed his own record label.

The big recording companies like RCA Nashville and Arista are run like any other business. Executives are transferred from other cities and other divisions within the company and are judged to be successful by the amount of revenue they generate. The decision was made several years ago to turn country music into pop music. Country Music started the transition from Kitty Wells to Taylor Swift and from George Jones to Kid Rock in an effort to claim a bigger share of the CD-buying public. The disconnect arises when you take a genre that has traditionally sung about God, America, family, and heartache and try to make it about fashionistas, MTV, and shallow people with situational morality and ethics.

Just like the Liberal Politics of the outspoken harpies, the Dixie Chicks, it just doesn’t work here in America’s Heartland.

…As was proven on November 8, 2016.

As we say in Dixie,

That dog don’t hunt.

Alan Jackson and George Strait were prophets.

Nobody saw him running from sixteenth avenue

They never found the fingerprint or the weapon that was used

But someone killed country music, cut out its heart and soul

They got away with murder down on music row The almighty dollar and the lust for worldwide fame

Slowly killed tradition and for that someone should hang

They all say not guilty, but the evidence will show

That murder was committed down on music row For the steel guitars no longer cry and fiddles barely play

But drums and rock ‘n’ roll guitars are mixed up in your face

Old Hank wouldn’t have a chance on today’s radio

Since they committed murder, down on music row They thought no one would miss it, once it was dead and gone

They said no one would buy them old drinking and cheating songs

Well I’ll still buy ’em

Well there ain’t no justice in it and the hard facts are cold

Murder’s been committed, down on music row Oh, the steel guitars no longer cry and you can’t hear fiddles play

With drums and rock ‘n roll guitars mixed right up in your face

Why, the hag, he wouldn’t have a chance on today’s radio

Since they committed murder down on music row

Why, they even tell the posse to pack up and go back home

There’s been an awful murder down on music row “Murder on Music Row”. George Strait/Alan Jackson, 2000

Please excuse my grammar.

But, what the East and Left Coast Liberals have done to “Country Music” today, ain’t just murder.

It’s a MASSACRE.

Until He Comes,

KJ