Outlaw Country for Folks Who Don’t Kiss the Ring
Happy Thanksgiving! We are blessed beyond belief. America. If you’ve travelled, you know. After a month in Bangladesh in ‘99, I kissed the tarmac on my return. There’s no place like our nation when it comes to opportunity.
But we still have turds in the punch bowl.
Only one turd in the punch bowl will do the trick, but we have a Cabinet full.
I read Jim Acosta’s column today that used the words Shill-Billy as a description for our VICE president and thought, sadly:
There’s a song.
He came from the hills with a story to sell
Wrote about struggle then sold out the plot
Now he’s down in the mud where the bootlickers dwell
Praising a king while the country rots
He swapped out the truth for a prime time thrill
Now he’s just a hollow suit on Capitol Hill
He tweets from the couch like a teenage fan
Wearing that smirk like a MAGA disguise
Used to talk tough bout the working man
Now he kisses the ring and repeats the lies
He plays VP but it’s all just fluff
A shill billy gig that ain’t redneck enough
He talks about faith then trashes his wife
Sells out his soul for a shot at the crown
No roots no guts just a showbiz life
With a Bible in hand and his pants pulled down
A boot lickin brat in a Vance campaign
Still chasin clout like it’s moonshine fame
Shill Billy got no spine
Just a puppet on the donor line
Dancin for a dollar crawlin for the crown
Makin them hillfolk look like clowns
You ain’t outlaw you ain’t free
You’re just Trumps banjo on Fox TV
Shill Billy got no spine
Just a puppet on the donor line
Shill Billy
Shill Billy
Happy Thanksgiving, America. I wrote “Shill Billy” because I love this country and I’m done calling the punch bowl clean when we all see what’s in it. The hills I come from raise people who work hard, tell the truth, and don’t kiss rings. They deserve better than a prop Bible, a costume outlaw, and a man who sold his own story for a camera close-up. Eat your turkey, love your people, and remember: the punch bowl’s ours, not theirs.
Gene Scott grew up on a tenant farm outside Sheffield, Illinois, in the shadow of a brickyard, a strip mine, and a nuclear dump, listening at a scarred oak kitchen table while farmers and truckers argued about weather, work, and God. Euclid trucks, coal dust, a lost hog in a mine shaft, and hard-luck relatives gave him a taste for the strange side of real life long before he read García Márquez, and he’s been trying to put that mix on the page ever since. He lives in East Tennessee with his wife, Lana, writing Appalachian-noir novels, essays, and protest songs about nurses, prisoners, teachers, and small-town survivors the brochures leave out. His books, including Jellybeaners and The Resistance Suite novellas, stay close to working people, bad bargains, and the stubborn grace that keeps turning up in broken places.
