Country legends including Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris have hailed as a political masterstroke President Obama’s nomination of Nashville hall-of-famer Loretta Lynn to fill the post of U.S. attorney general.
“This exhibits the president’s willingness to reach out to conservative-leaning southern states where Democrats, dragged down by Obama’s low approval ratings, lost heavily in last week’s midterm elections,” said Harris, who is currently working on a remastered collection of her greatest hits.
“The president has shown that he’s taken on board the concerns that millions of voters showed last week, and is prepared to work in a bipartisan fashion to move the country forward,” Nelson said in a press appearance before a concert in Houston, Texas last night.
“Loretta is a fine woman, and she has a beautiful voice,” he added.
Some legal analysts have attacked the president’s choice of Lynn, best known for her 1972 hit “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” arguing that the singer has no formal legal qualifications. In fact, she never attended college, instead leaving school at 15 to marry moonshine-runner Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn.
However, other observers contend that Lynn, whose turbulent marriage was marked by extramarital affairs and domestic violence, would bring empathy for women’s justice issues to the attorney general’s office. She is famed for pushing the boundaries of country music in the 1960s by addressing a diverse range of social issues such as cheating husbands, drunk husbands and abusive husbands.
Professor of Post-Feminist Culture and Law at Michigan State University Sally Strapner told the Dandy Goat: “When Lynn sang ‘Don’t Come Home A’ Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)’, she was challenging the heteronormative-patriarchal values that we were all fighting to break down at the time. She was a role model for me and many others.”
Meanwhile, far-left Nashville agitators the Dixie Chicks have slammed the nomination, calling Lynn a fascist and “a sellout to the commercial barons who run ‘Big Country’.”