Support Toby Keith and The Angry American Song

[thedrifter]

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

"Support Toby Keith and The Angry American Song"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/tkaa/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and
consider
signing yourself.

Best wishes,

Roger L. Alfano, SR.

[SEATJERKER]

...they have 650 + signatures, and comments, and i would hope that they get 6,500,000...

...he'll get on, no doubt, even if it takes GWB to do it...

[Keith_Hixson]

I can't imagine Jennings not wanting those lyrics on TV, especially with some of the other garbage lyrics that is heard on television these days. Oh well, such is the nature of some in the press. Talk about freedom of speech being taken away.


Keith


P.S. At first I thought this was a petition for the removal by Keith of warped humor on this site. I must start a thread to eliminate warped humor from American Life. Cynicism has no place in the American Experience.

[Arrow]

Let me tell you why Toby wrote this song. His dad was a vet I am not sure which war. Toby is probably in his late thirties so my guess is Vietnam. His dad lost an eye due to his service. Every day his dad kept a flag flying. When he passed over Toby took up the task. I got to get off here before I get real crude. Maybe one of you guys can say the word for me. You know the one. And direct it to Peter Jennings. I never did like that guy he is such a commie.

I can't find all the lyrics to Toby's song but here are some of them. Rock on Toby. Proud of you son!


Justice will be served, and the battle will rage/This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage/And you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A./'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/It's the American way.

"Uncle Sam puts your name at the top of his list, and the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist/And the eagle will fly, and it's going to be hell/You hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell, and it'll feel like the whole world is raining down on you/All brought to you courtesy of the red, white and blue."

[Arrow]

'Angry' 9/11 song cut from ABC's July 4 special
June 15, 2002

NASHVILLE -- A country song that warns terrorists, "You'll be sorry you messed with the U.S. of A," won't be part of a patriotic ABC television special on July 4, but accounts vary as to why. Toby Keith's response to the Sept. 11 attacks -- titled "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" -- was too angry to open the special, ABC spokeswoman Cathie Levine said Friday. The song includes the phrase, "We'll put a boot in your ass." "He required that he be the opening act of the show, because he had concerts in Utah to get to," Levine said. "This show is meant to be a celebration of American strength and diversity. By his own definition it's an angry song, and that's not what our producers wanted to open the celebration." Keith has said that ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, the host of the show, personally cut him from the lineup. "Peter Jennings comes in and says that that song has lyric content that does not belong on his television network," the 40-year-old said Wednesday while backstage at the CMT Flameworthy Video Music Awards. Levine said producers made the decision and Jennings didn't intervene. Scheduled performers on "In Search of America: A July 4th Musical Celebration" include Sheryl Crow, Brooks & Dunn, India.Arie, Gillian Welch, Tom Petty and the Boston Pops. (AP)

[Arrow]

Singer Toby Keith speaks out on ABC censorship

By Brian Mansfield, special for USA TODAY


By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
Country singer Toby Keith has some choice words for Peter Jennings.

Toby Keith says the producer of an ABC 4th of July TV special rescinded an offer to have the country singer perform his current hit after the show's host, World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings, heard the song and vetoed it.

The single, Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American), is an outpouring of grief, anger and frustration Keith wrote in the wake of Sept. 11 and the earlier death of his father. The controversial, patriotic song tells of a veteran who lost his eye in a combat training mission and also features a number of confrontational verses.

Lyrics from Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)

This big dog will fight

When you rattle his cage

And you'll be sorry that you messed with

The U.S. of A

'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass

It's the American way






"I find it interesting that he's not from the U.S.," Keith says of Jennings, who is Canadian. "I bet Dan Rather'd let me do it on his special."

ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine downplays the controversy and says that Keith's camp overstates the reasons he's not going to be on the show.

"They talked to him, but they talked to a lot of people," Levine says. "There were a lot of factors in play," among them a travel conflict, since Keith already had booked a show in Provo, Utah, that night. "The whole production is still in the planning stages."

Keith has been performing the song in his concerts all year, but initially wasn't sure he'd record it. That ambivalence was apparently shared at first by radio programmers. "But the second they put it on," Keith says, "they went, 'Yeah, he's right.' "

"We had one station in Phoenix that actually played an edited version," says DreamWorks Nashville promotion chief Scott Borchetta. "They got complaint callsbecause they bleeped (the word 'ass')."

Courtesy is the fastest-rising single of Keith's career, which has recently included country chart-toppers How Do You Like Me Now?! and I Wanna Talk About Me. The song, nearing the top 10 after just five weeks, will appear on Keith's album Unleashed, due July 23.

"By the time the 4th of July gets here, that thing'll be No. 1, and it'll sit there for weeks," says Keith, who returned this week from a USO tour to the Balkans.

"It was a song I was inspired to write because I lost (my father) six months before 9/11. Nobody wrote an angry American song, and this was one. It was the way everybody felt when they saw those two buildings fall."

[thedrifter]

Little Sparrow

Thanks for some backround on Toby...

Mr Jenning is complaning about the lyrics you wrote in the first paragraph.....

He stated :
We should not be so angry, and to get over it....

Sempers,

Roger

[Arrow]

at the award show the other night...

[Arrow]

Check this out:

ABC spokeswoman Cathie Levine said Friday. The song includes the phrase, "We'll put a boot in your ass." "He required that he be the opening act of the show, because he had concerts in Utah to get to," Levine said. "This show is meant to be a celebration of American strength and diversity. By his own definition it's an angry song, and that's not what our producers wanted to open the celebration."

My answer to Cathie Levine:

[SEATJERKER]

......and left "Peter" a little Arron Tippon....

..."KISS THIS...

...