John Phillip Suckass

Attaturk is not a Country Music fan -- I don't loathe it by and large and there are some truly talented and great country artists.

DeDurkheim is our sites resident music critic, not me. But generally, I think, three-fourths of all popular music be it rap, rock, or country comes down to two things depending on whether it's a man or woman singing...I'm a man and I want to have sex...or he wants to have sex and frankly he is terrible at it.

The other fourth generally is about something more, and too often for my taste in Country, it's about kicking some other nation's ass because nothing is more patriotic than the Daytona 500 -- or some such logic train disaster.

And now comes the latest example:

Country singer Chely Wright said yesterday she was dismissing the head of her fan club and shutting down a team of volunteers after The Tennessean learned that some of them posed as members of the military or their families to promote her latest song.

Seventeen members of a handpicked team of fans contacted radio stations around the country asking for more airplay for Wright's pro-military ballad, The Bumper of My SUV. It was all part of an organized campaign by leaders of the fan club who encouraged the team to do such things as ''tell 'em your husband is a marine — whatever it takes.''

After Wright learned that The Tennessean intended to publish an article about the campaign in today's newspaper, she issued a statement saying that she had dismissed Chuck Walter, a longtime friend who has headed her fan club since 1996.

Wright said she was ''shocked, saddened and deeply upset by this unethical behavior.'' She said Walter was ''an unpaid volunteer who acted without my knowledge or direction.''

In an interview a day earlier, Wright had described Walter as ''my best friend. We talk all the time, about everything.''

The success of Bumper has been a bit unusual compared with the way things generally go in country music.

Last week the song was listed by Billboard magazine as the second fastest-selling single in country music even though Wright no longer has a deal with a major record label. The promotional power of a major label is usually essential in getting sales as well as radio play.

Gee, sure sounds like a really broadminded, intellectually driven song doesn't it?

Essentially, the song is a contrived effort to bash war opponents, by defending a first-class petroleum guzzlers need for cheap gas and the use of marines as cannon-fodder to that end.

Jeebus. Such foolishness -- wouldn't she rather sing about how her boyfriend left her pregnant and sans her social security disability check and it's all Ted Kennedy's fault?