“Hey, we’re allowed to be angry.”
That was Toby Keith’s point in his 2002 “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue.”
Keith, who died Feb. 5, lost his father in 2001, a few months before 9/11. The elder Keith had lost his eye at war and taught his children to love America. His father’s sacrifice and patriotism are the focus of the first verse of “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue.”
But, of course, Keith didn’t write the song just for himself. He wrote it for a country that was reeling after the unexpected, unimaginable terrorist attacks of 9/11. Sadness is part of the song, but the most important part was the anger. Keith captured that anger perfectly in the words, music, and performance of the song. The climax of it is now legendary:
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
This line was, of course, controversial, and it seemingly led to a high-profile spat between Keith and ABC News, specifically ABC anchor Peter Jennings.
On July 4, 2002, ABC aired a special titled In Search of America: A July 4th Musical Celebration. Once “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” came out a few months ahead of the event, ABC contacted him about performing. It was perfect, considering that the half-climax of the song was the line, “We’ll light up your world like the Fourth of July.”
As Keith told the story, he was asked to open the event with that song, and he agreed, only to be vetoed by Peter Jennings, who objected to the “lyrical content” of the song. ABC News told a different story, and so Keith went public with his version.
On Wolf Blitzer’s show on CNN in June, Keith gave these comments:
“In the last hour, they said, ‘You’re not going to be doing it.’ And I said, ‘How come?’ And they said, ‘Mr. Jennings didn’t like the lyric content,’ said this wasn’t going to be on his show.”
But pay close attention to what Keith said next:
“And hey, he has right — let’s don’t forget he has a right, as an American, to veto me. But let’s just make sure that everybody knows that it’s not because we weren’t booked on there, that it was lyric content.”
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I remember pumping my fist and high-fiving my colleague Stefanie when Keith said that. Others were crying “censorship,” but Keith wasn’t. He reaffirmed that Peter Jennings had every right to disinvite Keith from Jennings’s own stage — Keith just thought everyone should know that Jennings did it and why.
Talk about the American way.