Reply #9: When invited to perform at the White House in 1972...

[bliss_eternal]

When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, President Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a Merle Haggard song that negatively portrays youthful drug users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song that derides the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash refused to play either song (he apparently found both songs morally reprehensible) and played a series of his own more left-leaning, politically-charged songs, including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about a brave Native-American World War II veteran who was racially mistreated upon his return to Arizona) and "Man in Black" (which contains angry, anti-war lyrics, which Cash almost certainly wrote about the Vietnam War).

taken from:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0143602/bio