Does country singer Dwight Yoakam favor gun violence? Piers Morgan seems to think so.

One of the most fantastic bits of news to come out in the last couple of weeks is that the New York City radio market again has a country music station, after being without one for more than a decade.  The last one, Y-107, was a constant companion in the days when my deep and abiding love of the genre was just germinating, and it introduced me to many a great song and artist. Here’s hoping that NYC’s new country music foray will do the same for a new generation.

While I’m on the country music topic, permit me to step up on the soapbox to talk about a segment from CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” from earlier this week.  Why the heck was I watching?, you might be thinking. Well, the guest for said segment was none other than Dwight Yoakam, whose music has been among my favorite since about the time I discovered country music in the mid-1990s. His style of retro country-rock and superlative songwriting were so darn COOL—I quickly amassed all of his albums and wore them out. (For a little taste, check out the first Yoakam video I ever saw, back in about 1996. SO. DARN. COOL.)

Anyway, a bit of backstory to the Piers Morgan appearance: In 2012, Yoakam released his first album of new material in seven years (3 Pears), which quickly racked up oodles of critical acclaim and ended up on many “best-of” lists at the end of the year.  So it was not exactly a big leap to expect a discussion of the album’s success so far, maybe even a little performance, right?

No.  The topic of the interview was GUNS.

Now, Yoakam is not a political artist whatsoever.  I have no idea which party he supports (if any), nor do I care. He has never been outspoken on any policy topic as far as I know.  No, he is instead a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter with a brand-new album, which should have provided plenty of material for a five-minute TV interview. Instead, Morgan led off by asking his opinion on guns and gun control (a favorite and controversial discussion topic of Morgan's for the past month).  Yoakam replied that he owns guns and is a Second Amendment supporter, but that guns are weapons and need to be treated with care.  The Sandy Hook shooting was an “anomalous horror,” Yoakam said, and that guns are “dangerous weapons.  And you got to be very cautious with them, around them, about them.”  In response, Morgan gave a reasoned defense of how greater control of firearms and ammunition could prevent the occurrence of such tragedies.

Actually, of course not! He decided to make some unfair attacks instead!  Morgan maintained that Yoakam’s 1988 song “Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room” (in which the narrator shoots his sleeping ex-girlfriend in the head for cheating on him) glorified gun violence.  Additionally, Morgan played a short clip from the movie Panic Room, in which Yoakam (an actor as well) appeared as a violent burglar brandishing a gun.  In short, Morgan was trying to place blame on Yoakam for helping to perpetuate a culture of gun violence. (You can judge for yourself by checking out the video of the segment here.)

Well, then. I suppose violent movies, violent songs, violent video games, violent TV programs, etc. are all out the window now.  I mean, if you have a hand in the production of such entertainment, that’s just as bad as pulling the trigger, right?

Look, I consider myself a supporter of the Second Amendment, but I’m also a supporter of the First Amendment.  And there seems to be a disturbing trend in the entertainment world of conflating the showing of an action with support for said action. I’ve got a piece up today on National Review Online about this trend and how it relates to criticism of Zero Dark Thirty (yes, shameless self-promotion: check it out here).  ZDT director Kathryn Bigelow, who has faced heaps of criticism about torture scenes in the film, responded in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed: “[C]onfusing depiction with endorsement is the first step toward chilling any American artist's ability and right to shine a light on dark deeds.”

I love that line—“confusing depiction with endorsement.” And that takes me back to the Piers Morgan interview: does Morgan truly think that Yoakam is okay with gun violence simply because he has appeared in violent movies and sung a song with a line about shooting someone?  The whole “depiction equals endorsement” idea is a pretty frightening one—and a pretty lazy conclusion to come to, I think.  Had Morgan and/or his researchers at CNN assessed Yoakam’s body of work as a singer, writer, and actor, they would have seen that arguing that Yoakam is okay with such violence is pretty ridiculous.  I don’t expect much from Morgan, but I do expect better than this from CNN.