August 6, 2004 5:14 AM

Consider the source

Charlie Daniels angers Arab community

No doubt playing the "some of my best friends are Arabs" card, Charlie Daniels is somehow managing to keep a straight face when he denies there is any bigotry behind "This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag". Right; and I'm the Queen of England.

DEARBORN, Mich. -- Charlie Daniels, the man who wrote and sang "This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag," is drawing heat from Arab-Americans who say it refers to a derogatory term used against them.

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?"

Gee, I can't begin to understand what it is that could possibly be so upsetting Arab-Americans....

Clearly, Daniels seems unable to grasp what all the fuss is about.

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."

"There are good Arabs and bad Arabs, good Greeks and bad Greeks, good people and bad people in any race," Daniels said. "I'm not a racist person. I came up during the old Jim Crow days. I know what racism is."

Daniels may know what racism is, but he certainly seems to lack an understanding of how words and the emotion behind them can have unintended consequences.

Daniels' song was written after 9.11, when emotions were still raw and unfocused anger was everywhere. I can understand the feelings and anger behind the words in the song, but recording it for commercial purposes is little more than crass commercialism. It smacks of dropping a burning match into a can of gasoline.

Of course, if Arab-Americans were smart, they'd ignore Daniels, who really is little more than a reactionary troll. By bringing attention to Daniels' ignorance and xenophobia, all they've really done is guarantee that he will sell a lot more records. Consider the source, ignore the hatred, and if you're lucky Daniels will quickly slide back into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on August 6, 2004 5:14 AM.

It's almost as if they planned it that way was the previous entry in this blog.

I knew there was something strange about the guy is the next entry in this blog.

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