An open letter to Steve Earle and his Management

"If I Could See Your Face Again" and politics
Sent on 6/14/2020

song

lyrics

Dear Mr. Earle and management,

First of all, I want to express immense appreciation for your song "If I Could See Your Face Again," with vocals by Elenore Whitmore. As you know, it is a song about a woman who lost her husband in the 2010 West Virginia mining explosion, and only after his death does she fully appreciate what a wonderful man he was and how much she misses him.

The song, and its timing in my life, has had a powerful effect on me since I first heard it a week ago. It has brought me to tears several times a day, which no song has done in well over a decade. There are three reasons why this song turns me into a near emotional wreck:

1) Over the past few weeks, I have been enduring a situation where someone I care about has lost her trust and respect for me over a situation where I was actually trying to demonstrate how much I appreciate her.

2) The simplicity and humility of the woman is overwhelming. These are good working people who know what's meaningful in life. They are a far cry from your perverted, narcissistic, rich liberal friends in Hollywood and Broadway who divorce at the drop of a hat.

3) For the past 60 years, feminists have been spewing nothing but hatred for us men and everything male and masculine. They now control the media, the education system, and corporate board rooms. Today, if a man makes one false move, his career could be destroyed or his access to his children removed. Yet, here is an uncorrupted, traditional woman, far removed from that culture, expressing lament and wishing she had appreciated her late husband more when he was alive.

This is the kind of catharsis that today is going to put most men over the top. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if 80 percent of the correspondence you are receiving about this song is from men, and most of them are experiencing the song the same way I am.

It's time to be realistic, Mr. Earle. Left wing political thought in 2020 IS a religion. It is a body of belief, adhered to without questioning by a group that is largely atheistic. They have no God or higher authority they can turn to so they have no choice but to invent their own. Feminism is one of its foundational beliefs. If you are a leftist and you don't endorse feminism, you are an apostate and not a true leftist. Feminism believes, as Gloria Steinem once said, that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

According to the newspaper review I read, your goal in creating the album "Ghosts of West Virginia" was to reach out to working people in a Red State area whose livelihood involved conventional energy. You wanted to get to know them and understand them so that you could eventually convert them over to your way of political thinking. But after interviewing this women, and writing what may be the most emotionally powerful song of your career - a song expressing a sentiment that the political left of 2020 would do ANYTHING to suppress and censor - I don't know how you could go through such an experience and remain a leftist. I find it totally baffling, even dishonest.

The reason men cry over this song, Mr. Earle, is due to the loss of this kind of innocence and sincerity in women thanks to everything your allies on the left have promoted for far too long. Even your ideas on energy and the environment are proving to be total lies. You can't power a 21st century economy on silly 3-blade wind generators with their own environmental problems, or solar panels that only generate energy 3-4 hours a day. Do the research! Without the subsidies, these frauds wouldn't even exist. Products that work don't need government subsidies. As the saying goes, build a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your door.

Yes, your intention was to convert these people. But if you were honest, you would have allowed THEM convert YOU. And so far, there is no sign you have.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Gill
Folk and Country Music programmer since 1978