Isn't this hot take about 40 years too late?
Pro Football Hall in Canton should reconsider Lynyrd Skynyrd - or invite Neil Young next year: Drew Tiene
https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2021/ ... tiene.htmlKENT, Ohio -- Professional football’s Concert for Legends, which will wind up the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement ceremony in Canton this August, will be co-headlined by Lynyrd Skynyrd, a band whose music has sometimes been characterized as “redneck rock.” The band seems a questionable choice, especially given the fact that half of this year’s eight new Hall of Fame inductees are African American.
Lynyrd Skynyrd was originally from Florida, but the band’s signature song is “Sweet Home Alabama,” an ode to the “Heart of Dixie” state. Its second stanza complains about the songs of Neil Young, whose “Southern Man” critiqued the slavery-based white supremacist heritage of the antebellum South in lines like “I heard screamin’ and bullwhips cracking” and, “now your crosses are burning fast.”
Young also later wrote a song actually named “Alabama,” which advised that “the devil fools with the best laid plan” and suggested to the state that, “you got the rest of the union to help you along.”
Sweet Home Alabama’s anti-Young rebuttal concludes with the dismissive line, “a southern man don’t need him around anyhow.”
A subsequent stanza of the song describes how, “in Birmingham they love the governor.” That governor of Alabama was none other than George C. Wallace, one of the most prominent white supremacist politicians in American history. Wallace won the electoral votes of five southern states in the 1968 U.S. presidential election on a segregationist platform. For good measure, this same stanza also notes that, “Watergate does not bother me.” So the machinations of President Richard Nixon, whose questionable political practices resulted in his having to leave office under threat of impeachment, were just fine with Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The majority of professional football players are African American, in 2019 almost 60% of the league. The NFL. has struggled with racial issues in recent years, most notably when former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt, instead of standing, for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as a protest against the unfair treatment of African Americans in the United States.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
