I can’t decide if I’m relieved or annoyed that Brad Paisley and LL Cool J released “Accidental Racist” while I was off the grid in Mexico. But their awkward melange of country and hip-hop, and even more awkward effort at racial dialogue has produced some great writing, whether it’s Ta-Nehisi on the choice of LL Cool J to provide racial cover rather than another rapper to provide a real half of a dialogue or Alan Pyke on the song as an attempt to heal America’s racial wounds with a fist bump. What I’m actually most struck by in the song, though, is its title, and what the idea that you can be “accidentally racist” means:

Most definitions of “accident” require that an incident that fits that description meet two criteria: that the event in question be both unintended and unforseeable. And it’s characteristic of our conversations about race that when someone causes offense, they insist that they aren’t culpable because their actions or speech were unintended, ignoring the question of possible foresight. It’s a means of defending yourself that puts responsibility for offense on the person who is offended, painting them as paranoid, suspicious, and generally lacking in good faith, and that allows people who are careless about race to avoid actual responsibility for hurting others. And it’s a defense that would be impossible for most people to make if they stepped back and weighed the question of whether, despite their intentions, their actions or speech could be foreseen to cause harm or summon up painful history.

Paisley’s first verse on “Accidental Racist” follows this formula to a T. He wants “the man that waited on me / At the Starbucks down on Main” to know that he doesn’t intend to telegraph his racial politics, that “The only thing I meant to say / Is I’m a Skynyrd fan.” But it doesn’t require prodigious powers of prognostication to be aware that Lynyrd Skynyrd is a band with a complex racial history, and that the Confederate national and battle flags are hurtful emblems to a lot of people. Expressing confusion that “The red flag on my chest somehow is / Like the elephant in the corner of the south” isn’t genuine surprise: it’s playing dumb, denying foresight that’s available to anyone even mildly aware of American racial politics and history. And refusing to engage in that process of thinking before you speak, or sing, or put on a t-shirt (or hell, buy a Skynyrd shirt that has a hot lady and the American flag mocked up to look like a tattoo, instead) isn’t an accident. It’s a deliberate decision, one born out of a decision to place your own comfort or convenience over the needs of other people.

Defending the song on Good Morning America today, LL Cool J insisted that “Hate can’t drive out hate, only love can. So what we’re talking about is compassion.” I don’t necessarily disagree with that sentiment. But for an act or person to meet the definition of compassionate requires more than a bland and friendly neutrality. Compassion requires both engagement and consideration for other people, and often some sacrifice. It’s leaving the Confederate Flag in the drawer at home and finding a better symbol of anti-racist Southern pride, not expecting other people not to inconvenience you because you’re really a nice guy.
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In trying to dream up a #slatepitch on the new Brad Paisley-LL Cool J collaboration “Accidental Racist,” a variety of contrarian avenues spring to mind: “Why Brad Paisley, Like Skynyrd Before Him, Is Right About The Stars & Bars.” “If You Love The Band You Can’t Hate ‘Accidental Racist.’” “Good Intentions Redeem Gag-Inducing Lyrics In Paisley-LL Collabo.”

None of those headlines can sustain a valid argument. Taking the The Band-themed one first: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Tears Of Rage” would spit in your tea if you tried to use their rich portraits of confederate humanity to excuse “Now my chains are gold but I’m still misunderstood/I wasn’t there when Sherman’s march turned the South into firewood” (LL) or “Fixed the buildings, dried some tears/But we’re still sifting through the rubble after 150 years” (Paisley). In the case of the Skynyrd pitch, you’d just be retreading a million strained defenses of the Confederate flag that boil down to “…BUT I REALLY LIKE THAT FLAG DON’T TAKE IT AWAY!” Because again, there’s no comparing the subversive lyrical tenor of “Sweet Home Alabama” – arguably the only classic rock staple more widely misunderstood than “Born In The USA” – to the godawful writing of “Accidental Racist.” And the on-wax conflict between Neil Young and Skynyrd provided exactly what’s lacking from the simplistic detente Paisley and LL attempt to voice: the unblinkered honesty that combativeness brings.

In the case of the redemptive-intentions #slatepitch, Rembert Brown already provided the appropriate irate mockery of LL’s inexcusable offer to “forget the iron chains,” among other lyrical crimes. But Brown left just enough meat on the bone to make a separate point:

This is the Americans Elect of pop culture racial healing.

Americans Elect was the Thomas Friedman-inspired moneypit for earnest rich people who believe that our policy issues can be fixed by taking the raspy edge off our politics. That’s an old idea, supported by the constant poll finding that Americans claim to want a less-caustic politics, but gutted by the real, sharp divides which underlie our policy conflicts. We genuinely disagree over the proper balances of liberty and safety, of individual and communal interests, of private property and public resources. The federalist, tri-partide cauldron our founders built functions best when those disagreements flare up underneath it and cause the country to change somewhere between as quickly as is morally just and as slowly as is socially practical. Efforts to smother those conflicts rather than identify legislators capable of crafting them into a truly responsive politics are counterproductive, and born of elites who are tired of the shouting and incapable of seeing its potential value.

The post-racial aspirations voiced by Paisley’s narrator and LL’s “black yankee” interlocutor suffer from the same self-serving, battle-weary ignorance that drove Americans Elect. While the voices in “Accidental Racist” espouse hyperawareness of color, they’re also calling for an approach to racial differences that’s functionally identical to the colorblindness canard Alyssa’s gutted before. The performers call for racism to magically heal itself through major chords and willpower. It’s The Secret by way of Tinkerbell. Paisley doesn’t want to talk to the coffeeshop guy about racism any more than LL wants to talk to white folks about mandatory minimums or systemic disparities in educational outcomes. They each want to know that ‘We’re cool, right bro?’ without actually engaging the ugly substance and legacy of American history. “Accidental Racist” deserves every ounce of clowning it gets, but a song this earnest that actually grappled with racial divisions wouldn’t merit such epic shade-throwing. Unfortunately, the aesthetics here are exactly as simple, cheap, and foolish as the sentiments. Indemnity masquerades as forgiveness, and squeezes critical self-examination conveniently out of the picture for stars&bars fans.

Like Americans Elect, the failures of “Accidental Racist” at least offer a sort of negative-space sketch of what forward motion might look like. There may be a professional political class that exploits voter antagonisms for profit rather than progress, but the antagonisms themselves are real. A third party that severs some of those antagonists from the parties that are minimally responsive to them in policy terms might do some good, but one that wishes them away is both foolish and damaging. Similarly, imagine the good that might come of pop artists calling not for a peaceful, easy, made-for-Clearchannel conversation about how racism manifests in 21^st-century America, but for a difficult, contentious, honest, and combative one.

How appropriate that Paisley locates the initiating event for his narrator’s earnest call for getting over it all in a Starbucks. “Accidental Racist” is the shiny plastic version of a call to productive racial discourse, a cheaply made thought-jalopy that will break down the second anyone foolish enough to buy it drives the thing off the lot.

I always enjoy reading Troy Patterson over at Slate, but his review of Nashville, ABC’s soapy drama about the rise of a great American city as told through the conflict between a rising country star, Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) and a falling one, Rayna James (Connie Britton), reminded me of a pet peeve: the tendency to frame conflicts between women as cat fights, rather than as expressions of legitimate divisions and substantive rivalries.

There’s no question that Juliette and Rayna don’t like each other much, and that they’re downright vicious to each other in a meeting arranged by their label. Rayna makes an effort to be nice to Juliette. But Juliette gives her what can only be described as the best modern cut direct I’ve ever seen, ignoring the attempt at a complement and an outstretched hand and turning instead to a legendary songwriter and radio host, telling him “It is such an honor to get a chance to sing for you tonight.” Even then, Rayna still tries, telling Juliette “You’re burning it up out there, girl.” But Juliette goes in for the kill, telling her: “My mama was one of your biggest fans. She said she’d listen to you while I was still in her belly.” Even if Rayna’s record sales are lagging behind Juliette’s, her fidelity to an old business model hasn’t dulled her ability to bring the burn. “Well, bless your little heart,” she tells Juliette. “That is a charming story. You probably got to go on soon. I’m sure you’re going to want to make sure you got those girls tucked in there real good.”

Taken in isolation, this would be an epic attack of cat-scratch fever. But the differences between Rayna and Juliette are real. Juliette needs pitch correction to make her recordings sound good, and her songs are poppier tunes, engineered to become earworms to listeners the same ages as Rayna’s pre-teen daughters. Those of us who mourn the homogenization of popular musical genres may sympathize with Rayna when she complains “Why do people listen to that adolescent crap? It sounds like feral cats to me. Why does everyone think she’s good?”

But on the other hand, she’s hustling in a way that Rayna’s not. Rayna may not like the new model for the music industry, but her nostalgia’s bread inflexibility. She doesn’t want to tour with Juliette, and she rejects the prospect of doing a tour in smaller venues that would both create artificial demand for tickets and help her reconnect with her most enthusiastic fans. She’s lazy about recording extra tracks for her album, and then irritated when other singers snap them up. It may be obnoxious of Juliette to go after Rayna’s bandleader and other collaborators, but she’s attuned to the careful balance between commercial success and Nashville credibility, and is making more efforts to shore up her weaknesses than Rayna is.

And if Juliette has mommy issues—hers is an addict who Juliette tries to avoid so she won’t let herself be talked into giving her mother money that would feed her drug use—that she works out by seducing any man who crosses her path, even making a play for a guy who bumps into her in a hallway, Rayna has whopping daddy issues. Hers is more present in her life than Juliette’s mother is in hers, and he’s played by Powers Boothe as a wheeling, dealing real estate tycoon. In denial about how much her father has helped her recording career and prickly about the possibility of coming under his influence, Rayna reflexively reacts against anything her father proposes or asks. I can understand why Rayna rejects her father’s machinations just as I can see why Juliette, who lacks the family and support that buoys Rayna, seeks out affirmation elsewhere.

Juliette and Rayna may go personal in their attacks on each other, but that doesn’t mean their differences aren’t substantive, whether they’re throwing down over aesthetics and authenticity, competing for talent, or charming crowds on stage at the Grand Ol’ Opry, where Rayna rules the stage with a queenly distance and Juliette reaches out to let her fans touch her. These are interesting, meaningful questions and jealousies rooted in actual economic pressures, rather than the result of irrational animosities. Juliette and Rayna may have perfectly-manicured claws and blown-out manes, but just because these lionesses are clashing doesn’t mean it’ a catfight.

I really love this New York Times Magazine infographic on how to accomplish the rather difficult task of DJing a political campaign event without offending the candidate, the audience, or running afoul of cranky artists. Attention to lyrics are at the top of the list:

There are obvious songs to stay away from — Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘‘Fortunate Son’’ for Romney, Public Enemy’s ‘‘Fear of a Black Planet’’ for Obama, Tom Jones’s ‘‘Sex Bomb’’ for Gingrich — but seemingly innocuous tracks also have to be vetted for double meaning. (Campaigns sometimes give D.J.’s specific playlists to avoid trouble.) ‘‘For Herman Cain, especially, I didn’t use anything with sexual overtones,’’ says John Donahue, who has also spun for Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. ‘‘A couple of songs on my list at his last rally were great, like this one upbeat Christina Aguilera song with the chorus ‘Ain’t no other man can stand up next to you.’ But the lyrics talk about calling your lover, so I didn’t play it.’’

I also think it’s telling what the Donahue suggest if the factors are just too complicated to get creative: ‘‘Play upbeat country. It’s usually got patriotic overtones. If ‘America’ is in the title, even better.’’ I saw a lot of complaints during the Grammys about how much country music was included in the ceremony given that it’s a genre with its own powerful infrastructure and awards shows. But increasingly, I think hip-hop and country are more the dominant consensus genres in this country, given both their free-standing success and their infiltration of pop and rock. I’m curious if Donahue, who DJs for conservative candidates, would give the same advice for Democratic rallies, or if he thinks country is solidly red and other genres are solidly blue.

If the soundtrack to Barack Obama’s first campaign for the presidency was the kind of mixtape a guy uses to woo a smitten new girlfriend, the songs he’ll be using on the campaign trail the second time around are all about adding a little spice to an established relationship. He’s moved on, as Bloomberg points out, from songs like “Move On Up” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” to more contemplative songs about attachment and commitment.

There are songs for estranged lovers, like Zac Brown Band’s “Keep Me In Mind,” a reminder that non-Obama alternatives could be decidedly bleak. “We always go our separate ways, but no one can love you, baby, the way I do / Keep me in mind /Somewhere along the road you might find me,” the song goes. “The world can be real tough, find shelter in me / If there’s no one else to love, keep me in mind.” Whether in Aretha Franklin’s cover of “The Weight” with it’s offer to “Put the weight on me,” or REO Speedwagon’s “Roll With the Changes,” with its promise that “As soon as you are able, woman, I am willin’ / To make the break that we are on the brink of / My cup is on the table – my love is spillin’ / Waiting here for you to take and drink of,” these songs are about partnership, about sharing the load—they’re about marriage rather than dating. Sugarland’s “Everyday America” is a reminder to stick with it if you’ve got a “Good man but a bad year.”

Unsurprisingly, Bruce Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own” is there in the mix, taking that sense of responsibility between two people national. Gwen Stefani connects individuals to a larger cause, reminding us that “You don’t have to be a famous person / Just to make your mark / A mother can be an inspiration / To her little son.” Montgomery Gentry’s “My Town” draws a direct line between the health of small towns and the hard work that goes into maintaining personal relationships—and insists that temporary dissatisfaction is a prelude to a life-long committment: “Where I ran off ‘cos I got mad, / An’ it came to blows with my old man. /Where I came back to settle down, /It’s where they’ll put me in the ground.”

Beyond the messages of the songs, it’s worth looking at how the playlist is calibrated to assert a cultural connection between the President and voters who might need a reminder of what they and Obama have in common when it comes to culture. The soundtrack’s heavily weighted to contemporary music: 17 of the 29 songs on it were released after 2000, and not surprisingly, given the president’s age, the 1970s are the second-most popular decade on the list. And to woo younger viewers, it’s available on Spotify. It’s similarly weighted towards male vocalists: 17 of the songs are by male solo artists or all-male groups, and another 8 are by groups that include both men and women—it’s men’s voices who will introduce Obama to his constituents.

There’s no remixing of the president’s speeches from the Black Eyed Peas Will.i.am, a major celebrity surrogate in the last campaign, this time around, and no “My President is Black” for those Young Jeezy fans in the audience. In fact, there’s no hip-hop on the list at all—black artists are represented by funk and soul instead, and I’d guess Ledisi will get a nice and deserved sales bump from her inclusion in this list. And I’m a bit surprised that Ricky Martin’s the only prominent Latino artist on the list. If Obama was willing to be a little downbeat, Los Lobos “One Time, One Night” could have been a good addition. Instead, the re-election campaign is going country, if not all the way chicken-fried.

It’s unsurprising that after running the gamut of defiance and contrition, Hank Williams, Jr. has responded to ESPN’s displeasure with his comparisons between the Commander and Chief and the Fuhrer by complaining that he’s a victim of censorship:

ESPN said on Thursday that it was its decision to end its long association with the singer, but Williams disputed that notion on his Web site: “After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made my decision. By pulling my opening Oct. 3, you (ESPN) stepped on the toes of the First Amendment freedom of speech, so therefore me, my song and all my rowdy friends are out of here. It’s been a great run.”

Freedom of speech means you’re at liberty to express whatever nonsense you like, not that anyone, particularly a major corporation that relies heavily on black athletes and a non-partisan image to maintain its audience, is required to give you a platform for said nonsense. And given that Hank Williams Sr.’s major influence was an African-American bluesman, and that he helped build white audiences for gospel and blues-inflected music, his son might want to consider how his remarks fit into the family legacy. Class will get you a long way.