Yer all right, Brady. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for making my point so succinctly. Do you know what the military does? Do you know that when our political leaders fail and it comes to war just what that entails? It entails US beating THEM. Pure and simple. It involves nothing short of victory. It involves nothing short of a successful mission. You cut and run you deny the successful completion of the mission. In other words, we lose. No war at any cost is EXACTLY what you are professing here. You don’t agree with it then we shouldn’t fight it. It is not difficult to understand in the least. We’re in it, we fight it to win, and we withdraw victorious. Anything short of that IS anti-military. Again, you CANNOT separate the warrior from the mission. You love your buds and want the war stopped at any cost. I get it. I understand it. I feel for you too but that is not supporting the troops. That is supporting your desire to see your beloved friends home. It is a desire to support human beings and young Americans. It’s a desire to remove the horrors of war that your friends have to face. War is inhuman and you should be concerned. It’s as natural as the sun coming up in the morning.

In any event, by your reckoning, the many Republican congressional leaders who loudly and repeatedly criticized Clinton’s military intervention in Bosnia were traitors who hated our troops and wanted to see them fail. Therein lies the rub, eh?

Yeah, I blasted the Rethugs over their behavior as well but they never once stepped over the line into sedition as this bunch of pantywaists did. Plus they were blasting Clinton over putting OUR armed forces under FOREIGN command. We just don’t do that. Lessons never seem to get learned except by those having to do the fighting. If you lived through Beirut you’d know what the big stink was. Under Clinton at that time, a man who so “loathed” the military that he wrote letters about it from the hallowed ground of England, the military was gutted. Literally. One of the big strawmen from the anti-war group is how ill-equipped we were to enter Iraq. Multiply that by 25 and you’ll just about have what we had before Kosovo. Toss in the blue hats and there was a legitimate gripe there but I just simply cannot remember ever hearing anyone stand on the floor of Congress and call our troops murderers. Or failures. Or the war is lost. Or remove the funding for them. Sorry, didn’t happen. Ah well, this is a perfect example of an effort in futility so I’ll just pass. You want to see me get my boxers in a bunch just bring up Darth Rumsfeld! Rub on that! ;-)

Just know that I don’t really give a fig for either the Dhimmocrats nor the Rethuglicans even though one is more dangerous to national security than the other. Which makes me just about a one issue voter I reckon. Welcome to a two party system! :-(

I fail to see a “social awareness” angle in it.

Stupid boy, you can’t fence that in
Stupid boy, it’s like holding back the wind
she laid her heart and soul right in your hands
And you stole her every dream and you crushed her plans
She never even knew she had a choice and that’s what happens
When the only voice she hears is telling her she can’t
Stupid boy, stupid boy

So what made you think you could take a life
And just push it push it around
I guess you build yourself up so high
You had to take her and break her down

Daaaaamn! So a song delving into relationships and how women should be treated as partners instead of some kind of chattel to be pushed around is not any form of social awareness or statement? A song that reinforces how we should walk side by side as partners through life instead of overpowering someone with some kind of Neanderthal male ego thing is simply a break-up song? Well, whip me, beat me, and call me Edna! Now that you’ve brought that to my attention I will place this song in the “Songs That Blow” file since it has zero redeeming social value what-so-ever! :-o

“Anti.” A prefix that means opposed to, against or hostile to. I have to be honest, I never heard “anti-military” before. I’ve heard accusations of “You don’t support the troops” from some people directed at others, but “anti-military” is escalating that rhetoric to a point where it is pejorative.

Now, there are certainly people out there who might fit that description. There are a lot of people out there with world views that are based on hate. However, to accuse an entire group of people that you don’t know of holding such views, with the only evidence being they voted for Keith Urban instead of Tim McGraw (and three other nominees), is beyond the pale.

It’s logically ridiculous, as well, as Dudley has already well-argued. It makes about as much sense as assuming that a shopper chose white bedsheets over red ones because they’re a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Now, Brady makes a few errant claims about my original post that I’ll address for posterity’s sake, even though the readers here are more than capable of reading said post and knowing that I said and did no such things.

1.
Brady: “To act like anti-military sentiments don’t exist is dishonest and to further allege that such a thing is below civil discourse is suspect at best.”

I didn’t act like such sentiments didn’t exist. There isn’t anything in my post that even approaches that. I said that it was a baseless accusation, and it was. And I do believe that throwing out accusations like that should be below civil discourse. You don’t have the right to accuse people of being opposed to something without having evidence to prove it. And no, one person winning a Grammy over four others, one of which was singing a song about a fallen soldier, is not evidence. It would be just as ridiculous for me to say that Vince Gill and Ricky Skaggs keep winning Grammys because of their outspoken conservative views. Even if I thought that were true, I don’t have any evidence of it because I don’t have voter totals and I don’t know the voters personally.

2. Brady: “The ad hominem attacks on Matt don’t address the issue of why Urban won over McGraw, which Matt’s speculations attempted to do.”

There was not an ad hominem attack in my post. All of my comments addressed the actual claim Matt made and how I felt about it. An ad hominem attack is when you argue against the character or beliefs of a person, rather than their actual words or actions. Matt’s original post and subsequent explanations amount to ad hominem attacks on NARAS voters and liberals in general, but again, other posters here have already hashed this one out. I will add, though, that Matt didn’t offer speculations as to why Urban won over McGraw, he offered a specific, definitive explanation: “I have to think that enough Academy voters were sufficiently anti-military to shift the vote from McGraw to Urban.”

3. Brady: “All of your analysis on Country Universe seems to suggest that “If You’re Reading This” should have easily won and you even rated it as the best single of 2007, claiming, “It’s the finest moment of McGraw’s distinguished career, and the best four minutes of country music in 2007.” Any ideas as to why McGraw didn’t get the nod?”

My analysis does not suggest that it should have easily won. Yes, I did (and do) love that song. It was my favorite single of 2007, though it wasn’t a runaway favorite. All that you are quoting is my personal opinion of the song, which has nothing to do with analyzing who will win a Grammy. You write that you found the song a bit contrived, and for all I know, I would’ve agreed with you had my veteran father not died shortly before I heard it.

The closest I did to an analysis on my site of this category was this:

“Frequent winner Vince Gill is absent from the race this year. Of the remaining nominees, two have never won (Alan Jackson, George Strait) and two have won just once (Keith Urban, Tim McGraw.) It’s worth noting that the Bentley, McGraw and Strait tracks also scored nods for Best Country Song, which may give them an edge. I’m guessing that Tim McGraw’s popularity with NARAS and the emotional impact of “If You’re Reading This” will carry him to victory, after confused voters scan repeatedly for Vince Gill’s name and finally realize he’s not in the running.”

I took a guess that it would be McGraw, but without Gill in the running, I had no clue. So as far as your question goes – “Any ideas as to why McGraw didn’t get the nod?” My answer is, he received less votes than Keith Urban. I suppose it’s possible that people wanting to reward that song split their votes between Best Male and Best Country Song. Alan Jackson won Best Country Song for “Where Were You” but lost the Best Male race to Johnny Cash in 2003. It’s pretty much impossible to know why a song doesn’t win a Grammy, which is what you’re trying to figure out here. Matt started with his conclusion – “If You’re Reading This” deserved to win – and when Grammy voters didn’t agree, looked for their ulterior motive, when the reality might be that voters simply didn’t come to the same conclusion in the first place. I agree with Matt that McGraw deserved to win, but that’s just my opinion. It’s not fact, and it doesn’t require a hidden agenda on the part of NARAS voters to explain why they didn’t collectively agree with me.

“If You’re Reading This” is a great performance and a great song, if Matt can come to the conclusion that “I Need You” deserved Best Country Song over it simply because he likes it more, why assume something like “anti-military sentiment” among the voters who chose “Stupid Boy” over it in a different race? As I wrote in my original comment and was validated by when Matt expanded on his reasoning in the comments, it reveals more about the biases of the writer than it does about the NARAS voters.

I thought “If You’re Reading This” was a bit contrived, but I still think McGraw did better than Urban and that it had a larger impact than “Stupid Boy.” I’d assume that there was some motivating factor other than vocal performance that swayed voters’ opinions, whether they prefer Urban (the same song was nominated twice and won the second time around), they prefer music that leans rock/pop, or their position on war or the military. With all the factors involved, I don’t think it would take a “large” number of voters to tip the win one way or the other.

—————-

So, does anyone think Billy Joe Shaver deserved the Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album Grammy? I thought Everybody’s Brother was immensely more interesting than Ricky Skaggs’ Salt Of The Earth.

That’s why I still don’t understand how you could assume (if I read the original sentence correctly) that a large number of people voted against “If You’re Reading This” because they’re opposed to the military itself rather than to the war. That would be a lot of crazies, even for the music business.