A badass name makes a real country singer. Three names make an outlaw.

David Allan Coe, for instance. The self-vindicating “longhaired redneck” wrote songs for years simply about being country as hell, also drunk and pissed off. An outlaw is a little like a maverick, except he’s supposed to brag about what he is. It’s part of his identity, and if you don’t believe him, he’ll kick your ass. As David Sedaris recently wrote regarding John McCain, a true maverick would never say he was one—not so, for badass outlaws. They sing about how badass they are all the time, and they are.

Mr. Coe sings:

The loudmouth in the corner’s getting to me
Talking ‘bout my earrings and my hair
I guess he ain’t read the sign that says I been to prison.
Someone ought to warn him, ‘fore I knock him off his chair

‘Cause my long hair just can’t cover up my redneck
I’ve won every fight I’ve ever fought
And I don’t need some turkey telling me that I ain’t country
Sayin’ I ain’t worth a damned old ticket that he bought

Damn.

Country singers tell great stories about real people, and outlaws tell really great stories about really screwed-up people. The hands of these storytellers gesticulate wildly like a standard songwriter’s, but then one hand twists into a jack-in-the-box wound up by the other hand and a surprise middle finger pops out, not unlike a third grader.

Outlaws tell stories about being in the diviest bars with the sleaziest prostitutes, stories unlike anything you’ve ever heard, but you believe every word. What’s more, you love them. You want to sit your ass on a porch and do nothing. You want to drive a piece-of-shit car and extol the dependability of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Maybe they’re lying to me by the dozens, but everyone to whom I show David Allan Coe loves his music. He drops the N-word, the C-word, and, when questioned about the authenticity of his stories, writes songs like “I’d Like to Kick the Shit Out of You”. But it’s only a matter of time before the black people, women, and skeptics I know are shouting the chorus louder than I am.

But again, an outlaw must have three names. Perhaps the gnarliest outlaw in all of country music, the very man Coe claims helped get him out of prison, had three: a man born J.R. Cash. Too famous to be an outlaw? Hardly. His best-known photograph (originally an ad defaming the Nashville production machine) shows him fiercely biting his lower lip, clutching a guitar, and thrusting a huge middle finger so close to the camera that it’s out of focus.

In fact, hiding one of your three names only makes you more credible as an outlaw. Americans can see this in President-elect Barack Hussein Obama, a man who destroyed the whispers of every naysayer in this country simply by bringing the name Hussein out of a dirty bunker-hole in the Iraqi desert and into the White House.

Whatever will happen to him now is anyone’s guess, and what he will do for America, too. But so many Americans ride into the next presidency with unbound hope and in genuine unity—in the bed of a Ford F-350 Outlaw, not a beat-up, old Maverick. He told an outlaw’s story, a hugely improbable story of the future, one that we ate up like hogs at an old trough. We needed it. We needed new feed in that trough. And as with all fantasies, we need to keep believing in it to make it so.

Outlaws understand real people; as its most extreme representatives, they exemplify what it means to be country. As crazy as David Allan Coe is, he’s capable of some unbelievable lyrics that cut deep and quick, like a shiv, and lay bare all the guts of American ugliness. Only a country outlaw can do that:

The neighbors said we lived like hicks
But they brung their cars for Paw to fix
Anyhow.
He was veteran-proud, tried and true
He’d fought till his heart was black and blue
Didn’t know how he’d made it through
The hard times
He bought our house on the G.I. Bill
But it wasn’t worth all he had to kill
To get it.

Obama exposed America in his rhetoric. He surprised me. He talked about what it meant to be an American in a way I’ve never heard before. He flat-out said he would only cut taxes for 95% of the country because they’re suffering and need it more than the rich. That’s a meaty thing to say, even for a guy who’s obviously very liberal. But regardless of what he actually accomplishes, this country is so immensely behind him, and that morale is so important. One friend called it “the passing of the torch to our generation”. A conservative friend said he “wanted our Kennedy” and didn’t care if he was a Democrat. An outlaw connects with people in the darkest of times and in the foulest of places.

The past couple days, I’ve felt an immeasurable pride every time I’ve opened up the newspaper and seen the name Barack Hussein Obama. It’s a powerful name. And seeing it printed in its entirety, as is the custom of newspapers reporting on a newly elected official, brings new posture to the American vocabulary.

We’re not hiding it anymore. His middle name is Hussein. So what? He’s going to be our president, for God’s sake; now we have to say it. Now everyone has to stop pretending they don’t know there’s a Hussein. And I know we can because we already have. We elected him—we chose the outlaw to lead this country away from the burning Bush. We’re OK with a black man, a middle-name-Hussein, a last-name-near-Osama holding this country in his hands, and we’re going to let that outlaw tell our story for us, to the rest of the world, who, I assure you, is listening damn closely. If the country remains together to perpetuate it, the story will become truth.

When country singer Steve Goodman wrote “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”, he told David Allan Coe that he thought it was the perfect country-western song.

Coe wrote back and told him that it sure as hell wasn’t. “He hadn’t said anything at all about Mama or trains or trucks or prison or gettin’ drunk,” Coe said in his letter. Goodman took one look at Coe’s notes and added another verse to the song.

It goes:

I was drunk the day my Mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in the pickup truck
She got run over by a damned old train.

People listen to outlaws; they believe them; they get behind their opinions, wild as they are. Outlaws change things just by sheer presence. I feel that every time I see the three names, side by side: Barack Hussein Obama. This country elected a man with that name. He’s going to be our president. He could prevent what was an inevitable crash.

If that ain’t country, I’ll kiss your ass.

Photo by Flickr user throwthedamnthing used under a Creative Commons license.