“Okie from Muskogee,” by Merle Haggard
— Friday, November 25th, 2011 —
In this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we take a look at an old Merle Haggard song, “Okie from Muskogee.” This is something of a protest song—a protest against “hippies,” those protesting the Vietnam War, those who’re seen as anti-patriotic and “counter-culture.”
Haggard has since repudiated the central message of this song, but I don’t think this song relates merely to the events of the 1960s, about what was going on in America at that time. Instead, I think “Okie from Muskogee” can teach us about our so-called “culture wars,” and what it means to have a kind of pride born of a “persecution complex”—but not the kind of persecution that comes along with believing in the gospel.
Often the people against whom we protest aren’t those who really threaten us at all. Often the people against whom we rage are the ones for whom we are to have pity. A kind of “Okie from Muskogee” mentality, in the end, is not far from any one of us. But the gospel calls us to something else altogether.
I can’t hear this without laughing, thinking about the old Star Wars spoof “Hardware Wars”, in which the music at the Cantina bar is “I’m proud to be old Obi-Wan Kenobi…”