Hate-Speech Alert: Toby Keith Publicizes Love of Lynching Parties

By Max Blumenthal, Huffington Post
Posted on July 29, 2008, Printed on May 27, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/93178/hate-speech_alert%3A_toby_keith_publicizes_love_of_lynching_parties

Despite his background as a comedian, Stephen Colbert is known by many of the authors who have appeared on his show as one of the toughest interviewers in the business. But on July 28, when country music superstar Toby Keith stepped on the set of the Colbert Report to promote his movie, Beer For My Horses, he was greeted by his host with nothing less than reverential admiration. After a jovial, back-slapping sit-down with Keith, Colbert turned the stage over to his guest for a performance of the song that inspired the title and theme of his forthcoming "Southern comedy."

While Keith belted out "Beer For My Horses," Colbert's studio audience clapped to the beat, blithely unaware that they were swaying to a racially tinged, explicitly pro-lynching anthem that calls for the vigilante-style hanging of car thieves, "gangsters doing dirty deeds ... crime in the streets," and other assorted evildoers.

The lyrics to Keith's ode to lynching are as follows:

Max Blumenthal is a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow whose work regularly appears in the Nation. A winner of the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Award, he is also a Research Fellow at Media Matters for America.

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