The Song That Should Have Bombed
By: Margo Hofmann
Tags: Feminism, Sexuality, Infrastructure, Country Music, Hacking

What AT&T, HBO, and Dicked Down in Dallas have to do with the Nashville Bombing

You never quite get used to it — lewd song lyrics depicting women as sluts, whores, bitches, and meat. No style of music is safe. Rap, rock, country — they’re all complicit, but few are as gratuitous as Trey Lewis’ Dicked Down in Dallas, which some have perversely dubbed ‘The Song that 2020 Needed’. To be clear: this pinnacle of white male misogynistic rage was not a song that women needed, or perhaps we did need it because we need to have this conversation. #TakeBackYourButt

It makes the Nashville bombing look a little like a gift of self-awareness to the White Men in Media from Santa. Let me explain.

If you’re not familiar with the #1 song on the music charts in recent weeks, which garnered nearly 1.5 million views since its December 1st release, here are some choice lyrics.

She’s gettin’ dicked down in Dallas

Railed out in Raleigh

Tag teamed up in Tennessee

Analed in Austin, buttfucked in Boston

Givin neck down in New Orleans

Puttin’ me through hell, fuckin’ someone else

Now I’m the one on my knees, prayin’ she’ll come back

Gimme that sweet ass, but I already know that she’s

Gettin’ dicked down in Dallas

(Dicked down, dicked down in Dallas)

(Dicked down, dicked down in Dallas)

This is nothing other than an attempt to bring the toxic, pornified objectification of women to radio. Humbly, I ask the White Men In Media, ‘What the f*&! do you think you’re doing?’ I hope your nine-year-old listens to this as mine did, and I hope your daughter works at the non-profit media company that we’re building (newsociety.club) because if this is the song that you needed, you don’t need a song, you need a shrink.

While Trey Lewis considers this song “relatable, as breakups go,” may I humbly suggest that people who find this ‘catchy’ and ‘relatable’ get some experience with anal penetration? By which I mean, as you assholes, with no understanding of the asshole, shove anal sex down women’s throats as an increasing heterosexual norm, are you aware that only 37% of women have had anal intercourse and a mere 31% of women find anal pleasurable? That is to say, slightly more than one in ten women actively enjoy anal. If your woman has given you the gift of anal sex, you ought to be kissing her feet, not chanting about buttfu&% parties in Boston.

Frankly, I don’t really imagine that any man humming along to this tune gives a rat’s ass about his partner’s pleasure. I assume these men have no idea and don’t care that anal intercourse can cause anal cancer, increase the risk of fecal incontinence, and increase the transmission of AIDS. That all seems like reasonable collateral damage for the male orgasm right? Is there any awareness whatsoever about the fact that women end up in the Emergency Room because of drunken, rough, anal sex and that consenting to anal sex is correlated with drug use and payment for sex?

Research suggests this is the problem: “Through these traditional gender roles and sexual scripts (e.g., gender and role conventions), women have been taught to prioritize their partners’ needs above their own, and this may be a strong motivator for women engaging in anal intercourse when the male partner desires it.” Women are not empowered to speak out for their own sexual gratification, and how can they be with only disparaging, belittling Angry White Male fantasies on the airwaves? @ElleOnWords back me up on this, please.

All fine and well, but what does this have to do with the Nashville bombing? Well, here’s a White Angry Female fantasy for you. The Nashville bombings were a warning shot, but they’re the final warning regarding the immense global infrastructure hack that is already underway.

According to their annual report, AT&T was selected by the U.S. government to build the FirstNet first responder network bringing ‘another layer of premium spectrum capacity’ to the airwaves. As the recent hacks on America’s infrastructure continue, this attack appears to be a warning about how easy it would be to cripple the emergency services system. I like to imagine this is also about sharing the airwaves and giving space to the conversations, like this one, that society needs to be having.

The backstory here is that the radio spectrum, which is used for all data transmission from radio, to TV, to cellular data, has a finite capacity. While that capacity has been growing for the last century, the reality is that the hackers have an unheard-of opportunity in America right now. As the pandemic rages and individuals guzzle bandwidth from home, the first responder infrastructure is vulnerable. It’s a damned if you do, and damned if you don’t scenario for the government: prioritize first responders and deny civilians the distraction of Netflix, and you get large-scale panic in a country full of guns. Don’t prioritize first responders and leave your citizens to fend for themselves during this crisis, and you get a wholesale breakdown in the legitimacy of the world’s most famous democracy.

Be clear, if Russia is behind this, the meddling in the US election four years ago was calculated for this moment. Most will remember the WannaCry ransomware of 2017, but ransomware can be rendered ineffective through the simple process of backing up data to multiple places. In recent years, hackers have pivoted from ransomware to doxware which holds sensitive information for ransom by threatening to make it public. Such information would include, in all probability, the fact that hackers could be demanding actions rather than funds.

What might US Treasury records show if they were released? My first guess is that the U.S. used Facebook to meddle in foreign elections long before someone meddled in ours. My second guess is that U.S. taxpayers have been paying doxware ransoms for at least a decade. Thirdly, if the U.S. did intervene in governance in other countries, there’s likely to be bad press regarding a) spying and meddling with allies, or b) supporting bad regimes like the one in Myanmar which contributed to the genocide of the Rohingyas.

Of course, the records might also show that Trump is not just a disgruntled loser but was being held at digital gunpoint to pardon the fifteen individuals he pardoned this week. Why? Because if you want to delegitimize one of the most powerful countries on the planet, you demonstrate how simple it is to subvert not just their justice system but their stated values. Snowden, Ulbricht, Gonzalez, and Assange may be the real prizes here.

In the White Angry Female fantasy, Trump has a few options: declare war on a country that may or may not be responsible for the hacks bearing in mind that “a declaration of war in itself creates a state of war under international law and legitimates the killing of enemy combatants, the seizure of enemy property, and the apprehension of enemy aliens.”

America might also choose to implement a technological draft: the wartime acquisition of technologically advanced personnel siphoned from Google, Amazon, and the like. To accomplish this, America would have to come clean about the extent of the current state of cyber insecurity and declare war while not knowing who their genuine target is. They may even decide to declare war on an ally just to accelerate wartime capabilities without the impending trade issues, or they could just choose China because China is torturing millions of Uighurs and the CPP is unlikely not to have a hand in this hack.

Sending a wake up call to the White Men In Media regarding their onus in the systematic oppression and objectification of women was really just to underscore that people who have a cause like equality or justice are infinitely more dedicated than people who simply follow profits and short-term sharehold returns.

Here’s how the dots lay out in the White Angry Female fantasy.

The site of the Nashville bombing was an AT&T broadcasting center. AT&T’s headquarters are in Dallas. AT&T owns HBO (and a ton of other channels since its acquisition of Time Warner) which is widely criticized for its virtually exclusively male showrunners, depicting rapes in Game of Thrones that weren’t in the original books and generally unflattering depictions of women. Is it that hard to believe that AT&T was somehow behind the production of this song? A leap? Yes. But not that big. P.S. Emergency services in Alabama were affected by the bombing in Nashville.

What that doesn’t add up for you?

Look, we all have our fantasies at the moment. You’re fantacizing that your government will stand strong amidst viruses, corruption, cartels, hacking and technological warfare. I don’t harbor that fantasy. My fantasy is that the hackers are here to deliver us from our archaic systems and to provide genuine security, justice and equality. A girl can dream.