Libs Melted Down Over These Oliver Anthony Lyrics: Here's Why Frederick Douglass Would Have Approved
Oliver Anthony’s viral working-class anthem “Rich Men North of Richmond” has resonated with listeners across the globe.
But liberals live to take offense at things, and so they have. Predictably, liberal writers found fault with a part of Anthony’s lyrics that criticized abuses in the welfare system.
Liberals, as usual, have it wrong, and the great 19th-century abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass explained why.
Anthony’s offending lyrics appeared in the hit song’s second stanza.
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare
Well god, if you’re 5 foot 3 and you’re 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
Liberals, of course, never miss an opportunity to parade their moral vanity.
Matthew Cantor of The Guardian jumped on the “fudge rounds” line and chastised Anthony for “punching down.”
“The supposed welfare abuse sounds like a rightwing talking point, and Anthony doesn’t appear to have considered that the nefarious fudge rounds might be feeding the very people he mentioned with nothing to eat,” Cantor wrote.
Cantor accused Anthony of “mocking the poorest of the poor” and adopted the tone of a liberal scold.
“If Anthony wants to keep moving upward, he should aim his punches in the same direction,” Cantor concluded.
Then, Cyrus Coron of Newsweek treated us to even more self-righteous drivel.
“Sexism and classism is a two course meal served only to working poor women, the lowest rung on our societal ladder,” Coron wailed.
Coron explained that he grew up on food stamps, which he now seems to regard as a license to embellish.
“Food stamps are nothing more than Americans investing in Americans. It’s called taking care of your own. I don’t care if you’re thick or thin—I just want you fed,” he wrote.
Without making even the slightest uncharitable comment, we may safely say that 300-pound people qualify as “fed.” Clearly, then, Coron missed Anthony’s meaning.
That did not stop Coron from once again mounting the liberal hobby horse of gender.
“I’ve seen the women around me battle obesity all my life. It’s not because they’re lazy or nihilistically self-indulgent, as Anthony implies in his song. It’s because they’re poor,” Coron wrote.
For the record, Anthony never mentioned sex. Coron himself smuggled the image of a diminutive, 300-pound woman into the song.
Liberals, of course, project their own biases onto others.
But the problem here runs even deeper.
For one thing, Cantor and Coron leapt to the defense of people whom Anthony never slighted. Nothing in those lyrics or in the song’s context would support the conclusion that Anthony mocked anyone but the powerful.
Furthermore, when Cantor and Coron defended the 300-pound consumer of junk food at public expense, they clearly had no idea the kind of people with whom they had aligned themselves.
To illustrate, let us turn to Christmastime on an antebellum Southern plantation.
In Chapter 18 of his 1892 autobiography, “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,” the former slave-turned-abolitionist and civil-rights leader explained how slaveholders used the holidays to reinforce the slave’s dependence on his or her master or mistress.
During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, slaves enjoyed freedom from labor. Masters and mistresses showered them with gifts and encouraged them to enjoy their week of relative, temporary liberty.
Of course, masters and mistresses did not want their slaves to spend the week engaged in anything like self-improvement.
“A slave who would work during the holidays was thought by his master undeserving of holidays,” Douglass wrote.
Indeed, slaveholders preferred a debauched slave to an ambitious one.
“Everything like rational enjoyment was frowned upon, and only those wild and low sports peculiar to semi-civilized people were encouraged,” Douglass wrote.
Most of all, slaveholders wanted to see their slaves drunk and despising themselves afterward.
“I have known slaveholders resort to cunning tricks, with a view of getting their slaves deplorably drunk,” Douglass wrote.
“Whole multitudes might be found stretched out in brutal drunkenness, at once helpless and disgusting,” he added. “Thus, when the slave asked for hours of ‘virtuous liberty,’ his cunning master took advantage of his ignorance and cheered him with a dose of vicious and revolting dissipation artfully labeled with the name of ‘liberty.'”
Douglass’ memories of the plantation at Christmastime allow us to construct an analogy.
To begin, we know that slaveholders who plied their slaves with liquor did not have the slaves’ interests in mind.
When we feed junk food to 300-pound people on public assistance, we clearly do not have their interests in mind.
Now comes the connection.
Even as a slave, Douglass secretly taught himself to read. Then, as a young man, he escaped slavery. So he learned that the world offered something better than Christmastime on the plantation.
Anthony, adopted by millions as the voice of the working class, also knows that something better than degrading dependence exists.
Slaves like Douglass who wanted to improve themselves became suspect in slaveholders’ eyes. Only a debauched slave could remain mentally enslaved.
Douglass never once blamed the slaves for their plight. But he did recognize that even within the context of slavery he and his debauched fellow slaves had made choices.
Anthony came closer to blaming welfare recipients because, after all, they are not slaves.
The point, however, has nothing to do with blame.
When Douglass tells a fellow slave that drinking will do him no good, and a slaveholder counters by insisting that the slave indulge in alcohol so as to relieve the cares of toil, of which advice to we approve?
In like manner, when Anthony calls out the abuses of a welfare system that keeps people dependent, and liberals then accuse Anthony of bashing the welfare recipient, what might we say about the liberals’ motives?
From their respective positions, Douglass and Anthony bemoaned the effect of debauchery on the oppressed or downtrodden.
Slaveholders regarded Douglass’ view as suspect. Liberals regard Anthony’s message as suspect.
The poor and brutalized do not always recognize their true friends. But when they learn the truth, as Douglass did, they never forget it.
Small wonder Anthony’s song has resonated with millions who know the truth.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
