Pat Boone continues his conservative slide, calling Obama a traitor

Pat Boone shown speaking/performing in 2007--wikimedia commons

Pat Boone, who was known years ago as a charismatic young pop star akin to Elvis Presley in popularity, has taken off his white buck shoes, who was part of his costume, and traded them for boots.

Those boots are walking in the mud of conservative politics, unlike those white buck shoes that symbolized the clean-cut kid of long ago.  But the politics in which Boone is wading into are more than just conservative, as that would be a compliment given the nature of Boone's comments.

He has called Obama "a traitor in the White House."  He even maintains Obama is worse than Benedict Arnold.

He writes about Obama, although he is careful not to use the President's name, although the article itself, as well as related comments in other columns, are part of a pattern of attacks on President Obama.  His present comments include:

Curiously, his upbringing is never closely examined or evaluated; it’s just assumed that anybody elected president must love America – but this young man had been trained by parents and others to consider this country a colonial oppressor and unfit to be a world leader! In college, by his own autobiographical account, he sought out Marxist professors, in not one but three colleges.

And Boone is part of a string of critics comparing Obama with the worst of dictators or communist leaders, that include Adolph Hitler and others.

Boone became popular with the teens whose parents saw him as the antithesis of Presley, the latter whose hip-swinging behaviors were likened to burlesque and worse.  Pat Boone, on the other hand, refused scenes where he was asked to kiss his leading lady and infused his remarks about himself with remarks that underlined his "Christian" values.  He did not hip swing but dressed conservatively and wore the white buck shoes that were part of the costume of the well-appointed, church-going fellow who sang in the crooner, not the rock-and-roll, style of the 1950's.  

Back in the 1950's, as rock-and-roll and rhythm and blues began to take over the music, getting the youth jumping on American Bandstand and the like, Boone stepped to the mike and sang as people did in the 1940's and before, current pop tunes that had the same cadence as the non-rockers had.

There were radio contests that pitted Boone against Presley to listeners, asking them to decide which singer was better or more popular.

And Presley would win, but by narrow margins.

In the meantime throughout his music history, Boone continued to use the Christian values platform to maintain a form of constancy, with his name in the public, even as his popularity as a performer began to slide, until he was no longer seen in movies or on television, except incidentally, after the mid-1960's.

Boone now may be winning the listeners again, but this time to a form of right-wing politics that simply undermines the sweetness for which he was once known.  And even as he slides into obscurity at the age of 80, at a time many of the youth may never have heard of him at all, except for his right-wing views.