Coincidentally (?), the film’s title is also the title of a book by right-wing pundit Laura Ingraham.
[stepping up onto soap box]
A couple of comments:
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The fact that Ms. Maines made her comment in London, rather than “on American soil” is a red herring. I doubt that anyone here honestly believes that the reaction would have been different if she had made the same statement at a concert in, say, San Francisco (though Bill O’Reilly might still argue that this is foreign soil).
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Everyone who got mad and destroyed their Dixie Chicks CD’s and other stuff was well within their rights. They don’t have to like the Chicks, and I certainly don’t have to like Toby Keith.
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The broadcast media, while operating within their legal rights, is on shakier ethical grounds as far as I’m concerned. They fell in line the same way they did in the war run-up. Diane Sawyer did everything short of demanding an apology in her interview. And NBC rejects an ad for the movie because it’s disparaging of Mr. Bush? Have they listened to Jay Leno’s monologue lately?
Compare this situation to what happened to the Beatles after John Lennon’s 'bigger than Jesus" remark. You had the same outrage, protests, radio station-sponsored album burnings (ah, nothing smells like freedom more than the destruction of art for political protest – but of course, political protest is what real art is supposed to be about, so the burning/smashing of the art is also art. but I digress…).
The difference is, of course, that in the 1960’s the stations were locally-owned institutions and reflected the views/morals of their local communities (they had to, or no one would listen). In this case, it’s clear that, despite protests to the contrary, the decision to ban the Chicks from the airwaves is a corporate decision and affects large and small markets across the country, regardless of local preferences. A few of these entities today own a huge percentage of the local stations across the country – in some of the small markets there is no locally owned station, no local personnel except for a station manager/engineer who makes no programming decisions.
Again, this is technically legal. No one can be obliged to play the Dixie Chicks music, or Toby Keith’s music, or the Beatles’ music.
But keep in mind that the broadcast media are licensed entities using the public airwaves with our collective permission. The Dixie Chicks will survive. But the collective “we” should begin to look closely at the control a few (fewer now than a decade ago, and fewer a decade from now than today) have over what we can see and hear. To dismiss these decisions as “market-driven” is a gross oversimplification; these companies are making profits using our resources. Their decisions on what to broadcast should require some consideration of the “public good.”
And yes, I’m aware of the expanding access to information/music/art/entertainment afforded us by the internet and cable, which are not licensed media, but I’m also aware that the vast majority of the cable universe is owned by the same media giants, as is a growing percentage of the most popular internet destinations…
[/stepping down from soap box]
By george, I think he’s got it! The point is: so much of the reaction to Natalie’s remark was not grass roots, it was astro-turf!
The Chicks lost some fans but also gained new ones. And they’ve made a film that sounds pretty interesting–not just something one ought to see to support one’s Liberal credentials.
I hate it when those darn Canadians are correct. 
The level and quality of the public discourse is what is at issue. The Chicks can say they don’t live the President’s war policy, and their fans can leave them and music suppliers and radio stations can cut off their noses to spite their faces if they so choose, but why do those who were exercising their free speech rights in opposition to the Chicks have to be so obnoxious and rude? I guess saying “We beg to differ” wasn’t vehement enough.
For one thing, because it was simultaneously a very popular opinion, even at the time. (Less so among the Chicks’ C&W fanbase, of course.)
Several comments:
(1) RickJay’s post is excellent. Everyone should read it.
(2) One thing that makes this story interesting, for me, is the extent to which the Dixie Chick’s crossed the Big Polarizing Boundaries. In American of today it is assumed that you’re either a red-stater or a blue-stater. Either you’re a liberal elite gay opera-attending vegetarian anti-Bush democrat from California, or you’re a down home country-music-loving NASCAR-watching pro-Bush republican. But the Dixie Chicks are country music, but ANTI-bush. It’s a much more interesting story than if some random alternative rock act had done the same thing
(3) Following up on what RickJay and jrepka said, it’s easy to take the “oh, the government didn’t do anything, so there’s no censorship, and nothing to worry about” argument too far. Sure, newspapers and radio stations are privately owned enterprises that want to make money and can do whatever they want. To an extent. But they (along with the internet, etc.) are also the medium over which our national discourse flows, and without our national discourse there can be no real democracy. I don’t have a position on this issue that I’m comfortable with, but I do know that boycotts, protests, and other situations in which viewpoints are stopped from being transmitted by significant portions of the national media are disturbing and worrisome, and potentially just as much of a threat as actual government-enforced censorship.
Nitpick: I think you meant “blacklisted.” Which helps put the whole thing in perspective. No, the Hollywood blacklists of the '40s and '50s were not enforced by the government, but by the kind of general-consensus “political correctness” described by RickJay in post #24. That does not mean that blacklisting was not an evil practice and an instance of oppressive censorship. It was. Same goes for the reaction to the Dixie Chicks.
I think what some of us objected to was the implication by the OP that the Dixie Chicks’ 1st amendment rights were violated, which they clearly were not.
Regarding the concern that viewpoints are stifled, I don’t see how this applies in this case. The Dixie Chicks’ unhappiness with the president was reported far and wide in every news media outlet available. There was no attempt to hide their views whatsoever. The charge that their MUSIC, which as far as I know doesn’t have much of political message, is not being played because of protests and concern for profits does not seem to me to be inhibiting debate in any way…quite to the contrary, it seems to have sparked debate more than stifled it.
When radio stations refuse to play them (on federally-assigned bandwidth, I hasten to point out) not because their music is bad but because of their political views, you are getting into McCarthyite blacklist territory.
I certainly see the validity of your basic point, but that’s at least partly because of the way The Dixie Chicks reacted, which is part of why it’s an interesting story. That is, if they had immediately apologized and never opened their mouths again, the whole thing would be a non-story, and the fact that they were anti-Bush would have faded into oblivion.
Although, honestly, I’ve now completely lost track of what point, if any, I’m trying to make 
Bingo.
This is “such a big deal”, but not because the Dixie Chicks have suffered greatly. While countless commentators assured in back in '03 that their career as musicians was surely over and they’d spend the rest of their lives selling shoes, they don’t seem to have done half-badly in reality. Every album they’ve released since then has been #1 for several weeks, if I recall correctly.
This is such a big deal because it’s emblematic of how a smaller and smaller cabal of conservative media owners controls more and more of what gets said on the airwaves. There was no mass popular uprising against what Natalie said. Few people heard what she said. There were no boycotts that forced radio stations to takes the Dixie Chicks off the air. There were executives who decided to take the Dixie Chicks off the air. The entire situation is emblematic of so much that goes on these days. We have the outrage of the Republican Party and their allies masquerading as mass outrage. There were never millions of people erupting with anger at what Natalie said. There were, rather, thousands of people erupting with obedience when right-wingers on hate radio and elsewhere told them to do so. In as much as there were (small) crowds burning Dixie Chicks CDs, most of them probably didn’t know what Natalie said and didn’t care.
An even better example of this phenomenon came from one our nation’s greatest trials and tribulation, Janet Jackson’s nipple. No one cared when it happened, but then several days preachers and conservative talking heads started ordering their audiences to be outraged. That not “how democracy is SUPPOSED to work”. It’s precisely how democracy isn’t supposed to work. Democracy works when everyone gets a voice. When a few suits decide who does and doesn’t get a voice, it’s not working. When those few suits decide that criticism of the government is verboten, it’s certainly not working.
I disagree. Choices are made all the time about what to play for a variety of reasons. If your target audience is going to avoid you because of the political views of an artist you play, it is certainly a reasonable reaction to stop playing them. Why should they play songs that (for whatever reason) the core audience of the radio station doesn’t want to listen to?
Are you saying that conservative talk radio stations should should have liberal hosts on from time to time because to exclude them is politically motivated and therefore wrong?
Telemark, let me turn that around on you. Do you mean to say that you have no problem with blacklisting?
That is to say, you have no problem with denying an entertainer access to his/her audience (and thereby depriving them of income) not because they aren’t entertaining, but based solely on their political beliefs?
(Talk radio is a different animal. There, the political opinions themselves are the entertainment, and may be relevant to programming choices.)
Blackballed is also appropriate in this context.
Regardless of whether you actually believe that they were being censored (government rights vs. private enterprise rights, etc.), this argument makes no sense. “You can say whatever you want, except if you say stuff we don’t like, you won’t have a job.” How would that not be censorship, assuming you agreed it was possible for Clear Channel et al to be involved in censorship?
And all of them aligned with the Administration, and vice-versa. That’s another problem. Can we confidently speak of this as private, not public, censorship when the boundaries between the two have begun to fade?
Because the Dixie Chicks don’t have a job…they have a business…they are in the business of selling their music. No one is firing them for anything, the public is simply expressing their opinion with their wallets, as they have every right to do. Likewise, a radio station is a business…they are in the business of selling ad space. They are obligated to the business to keep ratings up, and if the Dixie Chicks no longer appeal to their listeners, why would they play them? It would be irresponsible to do so, just to make a statement of non-censorship. A distinction has to be made between the radio station refusing to play them because of their opinions, and refusing to play them because the listeners don’t want to hear them anymore. the radio station is not censoring, they are making a business decision.
Your point was clear to me…that when debate is stifled, we all lose. Which is perfectly true, but I just don’t think it was in this case. I was listening to talk radio on the way home from work…I have a long commute and I listen to a lot of talk radio…and I was thinking that any of these pundits (liberal, conservative, whatever), would have LOVED to have the Dixie Chicks on to give their point of view, and engage in debate where appropriate. So, no, I do not think debate was stifled. Whether or not they were harmed financially is another matter, but as I said in my other post, they are a business. They need to appeal to their customers, and if they don’t, they pay the consequences, just as any business owner would.
If the government is doing it, then clearly no.
If a monopoly does that, then also no. There are special requirements on a monopoly.
If several media source decide that someone should be removed from the airwaves, but there are other sources that continue to play them, venues available for concerts, the Internet, CD sales, TV coverage, etc, then I don’t have a problem with it. There are many ways to get your message out. If media conglomeration continues then this could be a greater issue, but at the current time I don’t see this as a true blacklisting.
You are correct, Sarahfeena, that it is perfectly within the rights of the business owners to not play the music. But… there is no evidence that the Dixie Chicks were pulled from rotation because of some groundswell of public opinion. The reaction was almost instantaneous, and came down from the top. Remember that one of these companies famously generated a list of songs that its stations should not play (including John Lennon’s “Imagine”) right after 9/11. This was purely a corporate decision, not listener response.
Along with the rest of the telecommunications industry, these radio conglomerates were/are lobbying to have the FCC further weaken ownership rules, allowing them to buy up more bandwidth. The Chicks are a useful foil for political entities that are interested in promoting the “political correctness” that RickJay described so well. And everyone wants to stay on the side of the people who appoint the FCC board.
The last paragraph is pure paranoid speculation on my part. However, as I said earlier, the meta-issue here is the privatization of public areas: whether they be public airwaves that are handed over to corporations to do with as they wish, holding them to no standards other than to not show an unauthorized nipple or allow the president to be disparaged; or whether they be public squares that become private malls or Starbucks, where speech can be controlled and/or suppressed (legally, but in my opinion immorally) at the expense of “market forces.”
For those who believe that “market forces” should rule, I would suggest that this is not a case that you will want as an example in your textbooks. But the entities profiting from use of the public airwaves chose to suppress an entity without another way to promote their product. Again, legally, but in my opinion, unethically. Keep in mind that there certainly was no huge grassroots campaign against the album that was released this summer, yet the universal ban stays in effect. No airplay for the album, no promotions of concert dates.