Sam Han | Eportfolio

At the 7:00 mark of this video, Mike Huckabee, the former governor and current Bible-toting dinosaur apologist, picked up a bass and joined the band Nada under Tim Pawlenty’s tent. While standing in front of a crowd of Republican voters, at a family-friendly carnival that kids were dragged to, Mike Huckabee and Nada covered Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”—the classic country song that includes the line, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”

Mike Huckabee pays no mind to the unbelievably casual gun violence that Cash drawls. He bobs his head, driving along the bassline, no stop, no pause, no extended Bill O’Reilly harangue.

Johnny Cash was a drinker and a drug user, with several misdemeanors under his belt. One of his car crashes started a large-scale forest fire and he was subsequently sued by the federal government. (He was unapologetic.) He cheated on his wife. He sang about guns, he sang about violence. (He also sang about love, about loss, about faith.) Johnny Cash performed at the White House, numerous times, without a problem.

It’s amazing how selectively Fox News and its followers pick their battles. They can drum up war in foreign lands, they can excuse deaths of other skin colors. They can sign up everyone for the NRA and chain themselves to the Second Amendment fences. They can sing Johnny Cash and Ted Nugent, play Call of Duty 4. But as soon as a black man talks about holding a gun, then it’s something scary, something entirely different.

Jeff gets it right.