Just an American songwriter

The events of 9/11 were barely a year behind us when Steve Earle released "Jerusalem'', unleashing a torrent of negative publicity.

I don't make a big deal about it, but I'm as patriotic as my next-door neighbor. And I admit flinching upon hearing the controversial ballad "John Walker's Blues'' for the first time. I remember a friend at work saying "Your boy really stepped in it this time.'' Maybe. But I wasn't naive enough to believe that Earle had written a song in support of Walker and the Taliban.

Many people, including critics who review music, thought otherwise. And the lyrics to the song, with its eerie Eastern sound and mullah chants, seemed to support their conclusion.

I'm just an American boy raised on MTV
And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads
But none of 'em looked like me
So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him

The Arabic prayer in the chorus sounded downright spooky:

A shadu la ilaha illa Allah
There is no God but God

It certainly was a different point of view, which is what we come to expect from our best songwriters. But the timing might have been too close to the deep wounds opened on 9/11. We were still looking to round up all the evil-doers, and it was jolting to hear early news reports about an American kid taking up with the Taliban.

It turned out John Walker, while a troubled and conflicted young man, wasn't quite the jihadist he was made out to be. Nine of the most serious charges against him were dropped.

Nor did Earle's song deserve the wrath it received, including this New York Post headline: "Twisted Ballad Honors Tali-Rat"

David Carithers, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, offers a fascinating view of the songwriter in his paper ''Steve Earle and the Possibilities of Pragmatism.'' It originally appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, but you can read it by clicking here.

Earle once called himself a Marxist, which didn't win him many fans. Pragmatist fits him much better. Whatever label you choose, ''un-American'' shouldn't be one of them.

As Earle explained at the time: "I'm not trying to get myself deported or something. In a big way this is the most pro-American record I've ever made. I feel urgently American."

Don't we all?