Whoopi Goldberg slammed Jason Aldean’s latest music video, “Try That In A Small Town.” The controversial music video is causing a stir due to allegedly perpetuating racism. According to NBC News, the video is facing backlash over a scene where demonstrators are clashing with police. The video was also filmed in front of a Tennessee courthouse that was the site of a lynching.
The song lyrics include, “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / Well, that s— might fly in the city, good luck / Try that in a small town.”
Goldberg shared her thoughts on the controversial imagery on “The View.”
“He talks about life in a small town, and it’s different, and he chose these images. He’s got folks from the Black Lives Matter movement, and he’s talking about people taking care of each other, and I find it so interesting that it never occurred to Jason or the writers that that’s what these folks were doing: They were taking care of the people in their town because they didn’t like what they saw,” Goldberg said.
She continued, “Just like you talk about people taking care of each other in small towns, we do the same thing in big towns. You just have to realize that when you make it about Black Lives Matter, people kind of say, ‘Well, are you talking about Black people? What are you talking about here?'”
A Song that Promotes Division
Goldberg’s conservative cohost, Alyssa Farrah Griffin, said she would give the singer the “benefit of the doubt that his intent wasn’t to stoke division, glorify violence or racism.” But, Griffin added, that the lyrics made her think about the senseless killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a “Black man in a small town in the South who got shot for doing nothing wrong.”
Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin, took a much more critical stance of Aldean than Griffin. Behar called the song “deplorable” and “annoying.” Hostin said that the imagery used by the country music singer evoked thoughts of “sundown areas” for her.
“My mother and father, because they were an interracial couple, were run out of South Carolina by the KKK,” Hostin said while pointing to her mother in the audience. “My father is still scarred from that experience… so don’t tell me that not only was he aware of what he was doing by using that imagery, he embraces that imagery. Unfortunately, this became the No. 1 song on U.S. iTunes. We have a problem in this country about race, and the biggest problem is we refuse to admit that it exists.”
Hostin ended the segment by reading a Tweet response Aldean posted due to backlash.
Goldberg replied after Hostin read the tweet. “You’ve gone too far.”