RIP Loretta Lynn

Erik Loomis is a college professor, who specializes in labor and environmental history issues. He blogs at the blog I check regularly to read about the latest news and have a chance to give my .02. 

It also has weekly threads for NFL games and other things. Erik Loomis, for instance, has over a 1000 "grave entries" where he visits graves of historical characters as well as weekly music coverage. Music is one of his interests, making Loretta Lynn's death (she was over 90) of note for him.

My mom favored country music as I grew up, so a country music radio station was usually on. I enjoy country music as a whole too. Loretta Lynn is not of special interest to me personally. She's clearly a music pioneer, including among women country music singers. She also had some troubling right wing beliefs, including being a Trumpie. 

Since it's something he cares about, Loomis is suddenly "she's not just a right wing hack" about her. As noted in comments, he is not exactly consistent there, but he is not alone. We can honor her talent as well as flagging how she used her celebrity to promote bad ideas. And, it helps show that people are complex, and bad things are not just promoted pure.

Anyway, including with a song about the birth control pill, Loretta Lynn had quite a life.  I am listening to her music now.  Again, I like her, but she did not influence my cultural sense of things as much as some others. She was also one of those "oh, she is still alive? she is HOW old?" celebrity types.  Likewise, we can add "and Henry Kissinger is still alive" here.

I also checked out the movie version of her first autobiography, Coal Miner's Daughter.  The DVD has some interesting extras, including interviews the director had with Tommy Lee Jones (who plays her husband) and Loretta Lynn herself.  The DVD also has a commentary track with the director and Sissy Spacek (who Lynn herself chose to play her).  I only listened to around twenty or so minutes, but the commentary track seems pretty good.  The director is British and sounds rather posh.  

The movie has received a lot of praise. From what I can tell, it is well made and acted.  I was not overly excited about watching it, but that is not really a good sign.  I have noted that in recent years, movie watching is not really one of my things.  I do not have the patience to watch two hours of a classic biography of this nature or any such thing.  My recent watching of Brian's Song was more painless since it was only a little over an hour long.