4/24/03
THE DIXIE CHICKS
2 PAGES

I just got finished watching the Diane Sawyer interview with the Dixie Chicks. The basic story is that the lead singer Natalie made an off the cuff remark at a concert in London that she was embarrassed that President Bush was from Texas where the Dixie Chicks are from. It was really just another comment made in the long string of famous people voicing their opinion. But for some reason, the backlash on this one just mushroomed.

All over the place, people were boycotting the Dixie Chicks. Radio stations just stopped playing their stuff. A South Carolina legislator said in a public forum that it was time to get rid of the Dixie Chicks and that anybody who attends their concert should "Get ready to run," which is a riff on a lyric from one of their songs. There were even organized Dixie Chick album razings. I saw on TV, coverage of people throwing their albums into a pile and taking turns stomping on them. Including like 8-year-old kids. They brought in a bulldozer to roll over the pile just in case their point wasn't made clear by the stomping.

This whole time, I was seriously thinking that because of the big backlash, they must have been very vocal in their anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-troop statements. But as I learned today, it wasn't like that. It ALL stemmed from this ONE comment which was seriously said just kind of off the cuff a few days before the war. And even after Natalie tried to apologize for the disrespect in the comment, people didn't accept that. They assumed she was just trying to… I don't know kowtow to the public outctry and that it wasn't genuine. And that caused them to bash them all the more.

In the interview tonight, I thought they handled themselves very well. They were just real. They didn't do any Hollywood grandstanding or try to defend themselves or recant or anything. They just told it like it was. Natalie said that she agrees that what she said, the way she said it was disrespectful. But what it basically was was something said out of frustration at the whole situation, having so many questions that just weren't being answered, and she voiced her frustration in a disrespectful way. She's not really ashamed that the President is from Texas. She respects the president and understands that he is in possession of way more of the facts than she is. She just wishes she understood what those facts were. Something I totally identify with.

It's been sad that too many people in this country have just rolled over with this war. On both sides. The pro-war people have just agreed no questions asked with the President. While the anti-war people have taken to regurgitating liberal propaganda and finding ANY reason at all to oppose ANYTHING the president proposes to the point where it seems like more of a political thing than a question of the morality of war. The thing the Dixie Chicks were saying tonight is they were just being who they were, by asking questions to the things that didn't make sense to them. Yes, questioning even the president and his motives which is our God given right as Americans. Yet as seems to be the case with anybody who voices even the slightest opposition or even a QUESTION to this war, the pro-war people start calling them UN-AMERICAN.

Motherfucker, that word it starting to piss me off.

Even today on the talk-radio show I listen to, the guy, Glenn Beck was talking about this interview. He played a few preview clips from the interview including one where Natalie was saying that the she wishes she hadn't used the words she'd used, that it was something said on the spur of the moment. He started blasting her, saying basically "Either you think something or you don't. If you don't really mean it, don't say something like that."

The thing is, as I was watching this interview tonight, they were playing excerpts from callers to other radio stations in the south especially since this whole thing started. There was one person who actually said, "We should just send Natalie over to Iraq, strap her to a bomb and drop her on Saddam." Oh my God, the hypocrisy. At least I hope it's hypocrisy. I can't imagine a real actual human being saying that they really think it's a good idea to strap somebody to a bomb and drop them just because of ONE COMMENT. Obviously, she doesn't really mean that. She was just speaking out of frustration in the moment, and so she lashed out without thinking of what the implications truly are. That's what we do as humans. We ride on emotions. Even Glenn Beck has made numerous comments on his show about killing some of these celebrity's who are really outspoken. Obviously, he doesn't really think we should actually kill them because of their opinions. He speaks out of emotion.

Why can't people see that that's what Natalie was doing? Do they even hear themselves when they talk? Can they see that they are doing EXACTLY what Natalie did? I swear my head is going to explode. I really think this war has brought out a lot of things about this country that we never expected. Not about our leaders or our policies, but about the very citizens that supposedly make this nation great.

I say this in the frustration of the moment, right now, I am really ashamed to be an American. I'm ashamed that people who know nothing about the true spirit of this country are associating me with people who react so irrationally to somebody with a different opinion.

I'm heading down to Kentucky tomorrow to set up a system for the Kentucky Derby. True it's not deep south, but it's still Heartlandish. I plan on doing my part, and making my voice heard by taking all my Dixie Chicks albums down with me and blasting them out loud with all my windows open as I drive through downtown Louisville. Small steps.