Shame has become a dirty word of sorts. Decades of psychoanalysis and efforts to boost personal self-esteem have convinced many that self-reflection resulting in guilt is a hang-up to be avoided. Apparently, Merle Haggard – the subject of the “American Masters” (9 p.m., PBS) profile “Merle Haggard: Learning To Live With Myself” – never got the message.
Over five decades and hundreds of songs, Haggard has become the Shakespeare of shame as well as a master of such literary themes as pride and resentment. And he wrote and sang employing direct language and spare imagery that put him in the pantheon of country poets with Hank Williams.
While Haggard may not be the kind of man to seek counseling, “Learning” is shot through with self-analysis. Haggard’s hardscrabble youth, the resentment against Dust Bowl “Okies” in California in the 1930s and the early death of his father loom large. Haggard suggests that his subsequent rebellion and descent into petty criminality and prison all stem from that tragic loss.
As a teenage juvenile delinquent, Haggard made his mother’s life a nightmare, and he wrote any number of songs trying to make up for it. “Mama Tried,” “Mama’s Hungry Eyes” and “Lonesome Fugitive” echo with repentance of a man who has no one but himself to blame.
For all of the poetry of remorse, Haggard remains best known for “Okie From Muskogee,” a patriotic anti-hippie anthem during the contentious early 1970s. “Okie” earned Haggard the embrace of President Richard Nixon and California’s governor, Ronald Reagan. Students of history trying to understand the change in American politics over the past decades, from economic issues to matters of cultural division, would do well to study Merle Haggard.