Lee Greenwood: C or D?

Hanging around outside at a college apartment complex Friday night for the 7pm candle lighting deal, I heard most everybody cheer when someone cranked up Springsteen's "Born in the USA." There was little or no reaction to Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." Which Haggard songs are you referring to? I'm not that familiar with him, and totally unfamiliar with Mr. Sadler.

Ballad of the Green Berets . Which was THE ironioc record for 60s radicals to own. Merle Haggard was never really a pateriot and i thought that Born in the USA was at least slightly ironic .

Re Haggard: "Okie from Muskogee" doesn't sound so ironic after you hear "The Fightin' Side of Me". Apparently the Mekons went to meet him and he threatened to fight one of them for wearing a hammer-and- sickle T-shirt!

As for Staff Sgt. Sadler, along with the familiar "Ballad of the Green Berets", filled out the LP with "Badge of Courage", "Trooper's Lament", and "Salute to the Nurses",which was probably covered by AC/DC at some point.

Lee Greenwood is absolutely awful. Have you never heard "Proud to be an American?" "Okie from Muskogee" is an anti-hippie song; Haggard is basically a cranky libertarian type.

Kris is pretty dead-on about Merle Haggard. That said, Haggard's been kind of mealy-mouthed about "Okie from Muskogee" over the years -- sometimes he says he was being ironic, that he didn't care about people with long hair and he loved to smoke pot himself, he (allegedly) plays the song as a bit of a goof live, and he doesn't like G.W. very much. On the hand, there's "The Fightin' Side of Me" (allegedly done at his record company's behest, it should be mentioned) and "Are the Good Times Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)." So who really knows?