Right-wingers seem to have a limitless capacity for feeling victimized -- when they're not being forced to tolerate the existence of government, or of non-Judeo-Christian religions, or of any of a hundred other insults to their dignity, they're constantly casting about for new ways to feel a sense of victimization, directly or vicariously. Here's the latest story to feed that need, from Fox News Radio's Todd Starnes:
Football Coach Fired for Anti-Obama Song?
A Tennessee middle school football coach said he got fired after he wrote a song that criticized President Obama.
Bryan Glover, an assistant coach at Grassland Middle School near Nashville, co-wrote the country music song, "When You're Holding a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail."
It was co-written by a parent who has a child on the team. Glover, 26, said he emailed a copy of the song to friends, family members and player's parents through his personal email account.
And that's when all the trouble started for the self-described independent conservative....
OK, before I go any further, do you see what the guy did? He didn't just write a right-wing song. He wrote one and e-mailed it to players' parents. And apparently not just a select group of like-minded parents, according to this (non-Fox) local report:
It all stems from an email Glover sent through his personal Yahoo account.
"I sent it 99 percent of the people in my inbox-- all the way from my mom to people I haven't spoken to in years," said Glover.
But the email, with a link to his new song, went out to a hand full of parents of kids on the Grassland Football Team.
Within hours, parents called the school to complain of the politically charged lyrics and Glover said the principal at Grassland Middle School told the head football coach to release Glover from his position with the team....
The Superintendent of Williamson County Schools refused to say why Glover was fired, but he did speculate it could be an issue of how he obtained the parents email addresses.
"If someone is sending an email to parents using our system or knowledge you obtained through our system, you are limited in what kind of message you can send to parents, " said Dr. Mike Looney....
Fair enough -- sure, as a coach you might obtain a parent's e-mail address from the school you work for. And you might then send benign personal e-mails on your personal account using that knowledge. But it's another story when you use an e-mail address you obtained from the school to send political propaganda to people who aren't interested in such propaganda, and who might very realistically conclude that you're implying that a player on your team might be looked at more favorably by you if that propaganda is well received.
And this song is absolutely political propaganda. It's not racist, as some parents reportedly claimed (both stories mention that), but it does contain a statistically significant percentage of right-wing talking points from the past two years -- as well as an insinuation of violence at the very end (ah, but like Sarah Palin's "reload," I'm sure it's something we're going to be sternly warned not to take literally):
... He thinks big thoughts and he dreams big dreams / But it's another man’s sweat that pays for those schemes / He don't care how the little people feel / 'Cause saving the world is a big freaking deal / So he does his business behind closed doors / And pretends that the world is just begging for more / When the stuff hits the fan he says, "Don't look at me / If you got trouble, blame 43."
There'll be a party come this November / When we're gonna set things straight / All good people gonna gather 'round / Gonna show what made this country great / We'll run off the schemers and backroom dealers / So the Red, White and Blue will prevail / When we're holding the hammer / When we're holding the hammer / Everyone of them looks like a nail.
Right-wingers will surely want to whine and feel like victims about this. They'll want to feel that this teacher was singled out for persecution. That's nonsense -- he's no more singled out for persecution than the Oregon teacher who was forced to resign after posting a "Crash the Tea Party" site and other conservative-mocking messages, some of it on school time. He's no more singled out than the New York City teacher dismissed for taking high school students on a field trip to Cuba, or the Pennsylvania teacher dismissed for using her blog to criticize a conservative student's class presentation, or the Catholic school teacher who was fired for having in vitro fertilization. This door swings both ways.
And if you really want to hear the song, it's here.
(By the way, is there any right-winger in America now who hasn't written an anti-Obama, pro-tea party country song?)
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