John Mellencamp has released a new song inspired by Jena’s famous noose incident.  Produced by the gifted T-Bone Burnett, the song is reminiscent of Neil Young’s “Ohio” and Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”.  In other words, it’s a throw-back.  The lyrics, by pop standards, are pretty well-written, and the hook is infectious; but it is the accompanying video that has folks in Jena upset.

Jena’s mayor, Murphy R. McMillin, laments that “The town of Jena has for months been mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied.”  Black-and-white images of freedom marches, Martin Luther King Jr., lynchings, and white supremacy placards from the 1960s, McMillin suggests, merely underscore Jena’s ill-deserved reputation as the haunt of all evil.

“I do not want to diminish the impression that the hanging of the nooses has had on good people,” McMillin told the Associated Press in a carefully worded statement. “I do recognized that what happened is insulting and hurtful.”

But, he said, “To put the incident in Jena in the same league as those who were murdered in the 1960s cheapens their sacrifice and insults their memory.”

Perhaps Mr. McMillin has a point.  The video is a bit over-the-top.  Moreover, it deflects attention from the disastrous handing of the noose incident by adults to the behavior of adolescent school children.  Reed Walters and Roy Breithaupt’s treated the noose hangers as innocent pranksters while signalling that the behavior of black parents and students who protested the noose incident was irresponsible and inflammatory. 

White residents, if the Jena Timesis anything to go by, thought Reed and Roy had it right on both counts.  Black residents were left with the impression that public officials had given their tacit approval to a message of hate.  When concerned parents attempted to share their views with the local school board, they were refused a hearing.  Finally allowed to make a brief presentation, the parents met with stoney silence.  Only the single black member of the school board thanked them for coming.

Viewed against the backdrop of these well-documented facts, John Mellencamp’s take on Jena isn’t so easy to dismiss.  At the very least, Jena authorities revealed an appalling lack of racial sensitivity.  Mayor McMillin assures the outside world that Jena residents hate the  noose symbol every bit as much as John Mellencamp.  White Jena, the mayor suggests, feels the pain of black Jena, and always has. 

We’ll see if Mr. Mellencamp (and the 30,000 people who visited Jena on September 20th) can be convinced of that.  I’m not betting the rent money.