Charlie Daniels Will Not Be On the Vote For Change Tour

Charlie Daniels has been among the more vocal pro-war musicians since 9/11:

Why you bunch of pitiful, hypocritical, idiotic, spoiled mugwumps. Get your head out of the sand and smell the Trade Towers burning. Do you think that a trip to Iraq by Sean Penn did anything but encourage a wanton murderer to think that the people of the U.S.A. didn’t have the nerve or the guts to fight him?

Barbra Streisand’s fanatical and hateful rantings about George Bush makes about as much sense as Michael Jackson hanging a baby over a railing.

You people need to get out of Hollywood once in a while and get out into the real world. You’d be surprised at the hostility you would find out here.

This was from March of last year.

Now Daniels is under fire from Arab-Americans, who say his song “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s a Flag” is derogatory:

Daniels, 67, is scheduled to perform Saturday in Dearborn, the center of southeastern Michigan’s 300,000-member Arab-American community.

After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Daniels wrote and recorded the song, which became a country hit.

It begins:

“This ain’t no rag, it’s a flag and we don’t wear it on our heads. It’s a symbol of the land where the good guys live. Are you listening to what I said?”

On Saturday, the Charlie Daniels Band will perform at the city-sponsored Homecoming Festival.

“Someone who is trying to get popular through bigotry, bias and hatred should not be welcome, especially in a city like Dearborn with its rich diversity,” Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told the Detroit Free Press.

City spokeswoman Mary Laundroche said no formal complaints have been received about the performance and the show will go on.

“Ragheads” is a slur used against Arabs, Muslims and others who wear turbans or cover their heads.

Daniels says the song is not directed at Arabs and Muslims in general, just at turbaned terrorists like Osama bin Laden

“It’s not anti-Arab or anti-anything,” he said Wednesday by phone from Tennessee, where he lives. “The only thing it’s ‘anti’ is the people who bombed us on 9/11. I have people who say you’re putting down people who wear turbans. I’m not.” [AP]

Since “raghead” isn’t used in the song, the offense is indirect, and other lyrics in the song, including references to “You can crawl back in your hole/Like a dirty little mole,” make it clear that it is directed against bin Laden and not the general turbaned populace – not that it should win any sensitivity awards or anything, either. Overt patriotism bordering on jingoism isn’t a liability in country music, however.

Daniels also has a book entitled Ain’t No Rag.