That’s how I free up time to do this. 
Seriously, I have a wife, three small kids and a job. I couldn’t be bothered to watch most of Bush’s or Clinton’s speeches and would just read them instead - I see no reason to change this just because someone else is in the White House.
I respectfully disagree with notions about the propriety. Hoping not to sound solemn or portentous, its a matter of duty.
Citizens of a democracy have a duty not offered to others, democracy involves a commitment, or it will not succeed. Its not that democracy is torn from our cold, dead hands, or even that we are conned out of it. Its that we get complacent, and lazy. Its that we take our citizen’s duty with a shrug. What happens then? We’ve seen what happens, good people mill about aimlessly while bad people take charge, the center does not hold, rough beasts slouch.
America is more than just a country, people are willing to kill and die for Greater Serbia, more fool they. Its not about a geographical entity, its about the dream being made fact, its about equality and justice, and its worth it. It matters.
There are times of relative ease, sure, when our duties don’t press upon us. And then there are times when fools and villains are corrupting the very spirit of our nation. And then we should speak, we know we should speak, we are obliged to speak by the sacrifices made by others, made so that we can speak.
Perhaps there is a venue too special and sacred for Ms Mains to speak up, but a country music concert isn’t one of them. She’s just a country western singer, and she speaks up, I’m just a message board bore, and I speak up. Many good people have given their all to protect democracy, the least we can do is deserve it.
Well I guarantee you if Alan Jackson or any other mainstream country music star went overseas and dissed Obama, many of the same people who were burning the Dixie Chicks in effigy would be talking about what a great patriot he is, lining up to buy his CDs and painting any one who dared object to his statements as a fascist.
I like them more for it. I was kinda sad that they apologized and I thought the “Not Ready to Make Nice” song was bad ass. Music is generally better when someone is angry at something. I even liked the jingoistic Toby Keith’s songs with Willie. I hate that country music has become lite rock about how much we love Jesus, our family, and America.
“Well, I was drunk the day my Mamma got out of prison…”
No sir, they don’t write 'em like that any more. Not only do they smoke marijuana in Muskogee, they cook meth.
You can not guarantee it. I think it would be pretty well ignored. The deep south would applaud him as a hero. Righty talk radio and TV would laud him and declare him a great thinker and patriot.
Not Ready to Make Nice is awesome. The video is cool too, in a bizzaro creepy kind of way.
I haven’t figured out who “Not Ready to Make Nice” was aimed at.
NOBODY who hated Natalie Maines in the aftermath of her comments has the slightest interest in “making nice” with her.
She can’t very well tell people where they can stick their apologies when NOBODY is offering any apologies.
Howard Stern lambasted her for her comments. He has since apologized profusely and had her on his show several times.
Not a typo at all. I’ve been calling him that for over five years, now.
You’re just the first person who’s mentioned noticing it.
“Free speech” guarantees a person that the government will not strip a person of his rights to impart ideas. I am for this.
However, when I am paying you for a service, I do not want to be forced to listen to your personal political opinions, unless I have asked you for them.
If I go to McDonalds, I recognize the cashier’s right to tell me he/she is embarrassed that W. was president - or whatever. I would not ask to ban this speech.
Same with my entertainers. They are free to say what they want. But I don’t want them to hit me with their political opinions when I have paid them to *entertain *me.
Would I boycott them?
Well as in all things in my life, it might depend on what mood I was in when they did it, or how often they did it. In a bad mood, the cashier at McD’s might piss me off enough that I would start going elsewhere. I might stop listening to Dixie Chicks and/or buying their music.
More likely, it would annoy me, but I would overlook it unless it were frequent.
Of course, there *are *venues where we pay entertainers to give opinions. Bill Mahar specializes in that. I’m not the least bit interested in his opinions and so I will not watch him.
So you folks don’t feel ashamed for what Bush did to the Iraqi people?
Certainly I didn’t say that.
Music concerts aren’t like going to Mickie D’s or buying a new sofa. I have no problem with any performer spouting their political opinions - it’s their forum, after all, if I just wanted palyback I’d pop in a CD. If their opinion is asinine (which Maines’s wasn’t) I can just ignore it.
But then I come from a punk/80s pop background, political opinions came standard. What grates people is the unexpectedness of that opinion from those girls, not the fact that there was an opinion at all. I guaran-damn-tee if there had been a speech about “the troops” instead, there would have been no flak in the US at all (but probably some in the UK)
I make the point because what the Dixie Chicks were talking about seems to have been a little lost.
Best I recall, they were concerned at the invasion of a country 10,000 miles on transparently bogus pretexts in furtherance of a political ideology and some fossil shit that country had underground.
They might eve n have been vaguely concerned for the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who might die, or the soldiers on both sides, or the millions potentially displaced.
But here we are, concerned that a citizen of the USA would criticize the President. It’s about as focused and mature as the cheese-eating surrender monkey argument.
Gee, I was saying this about Carrie Prejean just the other day!
To the topic at hand, I can offer my perspective as a resident of the mostly Rural South. To the people I work with (who are by and large reflexively “Conservative” George W. Bush Republicans), Maines’ comments represented a personal betrayal to them. Country music is seen as a reflection of local community values here, and the idea that one of their heroes would insult President Bush in such a way simply does not compute. And its not a matter of respect for the Office of the President. If Maines had kept her mouth shut in this example, but came out today in support of President Obama’s health care initiative, the reaction would have been less explosive, but still very negative and damaging, because Obama’s presidency is seen as an aberrition by a lot of folks around here. To support him in any way is to insult their perceptions and value system. Such is the nature of the Country music fan base, at least from what I have observed in my region.
This attitude differs from that of rock music fans. I personally think that Ted Nugent’s political beliefs are bizarre to the point of caricature (although I think he plays a lot of that up to try and make a few bucks); however, that doesn’t stop me from listening to “Stranglehold” at top volume as I type this before preparing for Mass early on a Sunday morning.
I think she’s saying that she’s not ready to apologize:
I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
She wasn’t ready to forget all the criticism, boycotts, and death threats and issue the standard apology that I’m sure her record company, manager, and assorted other influences in her life were probably urging her to say.
Except that she did issue just such an apology, four days later (from Wiki):
She was less apologetic in the weeks and months that followed; the iconic Entertainment Weekly cover they did was only a month or so after the comments. I think this was probably too soon to really have an effect on the national debate, and after the initial fracas it was all lost in the news of the war itself that year.
“Not Ready to Make Nice” came three years later, when the tide had turned pretty sharply against the war and GWB. Between that and the documentary they made about the whole fiasco, I felt like they really were trying to milk it and take advantage of the fact that public opinion had finally caught up with them. (I don’t really blame them for doing so, though.)
For a lot of people having a Democratic president does not compute. Where I grew up, a small conservative town in the Midwest, Bill Clinton was despised. If he had come up with a cure for cancer they still would have seen him as nothing more than a smug, philandering asshole. I can remember in high school someone actually wearing a T-shirt with a target over his face and saying something like “Where is Oswald when you need him?” That’s why I try to avoid talking politics when I go back. I can only imagine what they’re saying about Obama.
You also mentioned the fact that you like Ted Nugent. A lot of rock fans can overlook the fact that their favorite artists are assholes. Hell, I actually once had one of my favorite artists act like an asshole toward me personally, but that didn’t stop me from liking his music.
I didn’t really understand the flap, either.
September 11 would have been almost 18 months ago to the day at the time. It seems like a reasonable time for a person to evaluate the POTUS and his plans to respond to the situation.
They were in the UK, among our closest allies, not in Iraq.
I think people go to concerts to have fun and forget about their troubles for awhile, so in that sense it was a bad idea. And you just know that some of the crowd would agree and some wouldn’t, so it could alienate some people.
But burning their discs? What, are there hidden messages in all their songs or something? Reactions to anybody criticizing the government during Bush’s tenure seemed like “Four legs good, two legs bad!” Now with Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, the illegal wiretaps and other debacles, some might say the Dixie Chicks were on the right track for criticizing them.
As for parents pulling their kids out of school, WTF? I really have to ponder that one.
