Chicks rule

People keep telling me I need to update my blog. I’ve been so busy at work that I haven’t had time to think about much of anything else.

Well, there is one thing that’s been nagging at the back of my brain. I caught a radio interview with one of the Dixie Chicks last week, and she was talking about their latest album, which critics are saying is their best ever. The problem is that tons of country radio stations refuse to play it because the band was labeled “unpatriotic” in 2003 when lead singer Natalie Maines said, in a London club to a Dixie Chicks audience, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

Never mind that we were on the verge of declaring war under false pretenses, as our president and his administration were fabricating a link between Sept. 11 and Iraq.

Never mind that she had been surrounded by the European press all week who seemed to be lumping all Americans into one pro-Bush, mindless blob of idiots who were just out for blood in the name of Sept. 11, and she wanted to set the record straight and say that we Americans do think for ourselves.

Never mind that part of the beauty of being an American is the right to free speech, an ideal that should be heralded, not shunned.

Natalie took a beating for that statement, which back then made me shake my head at how much of America is really, embarrassingly small-minded. But it’s THREE YEARS LATER, people! I honestly couldn’t believe that there are entire radio stations that are still banning that band, and scores of Americans who are letting them (even insisting that they do!).

I’m not a huge country music fan (though I have the Chicks’ first album from eons ago). I am, however, proud to call Natalie Maines a fellow American. In fact, she is the kind of citizen I want this country to be known for: Gutsy, intelligent, artistic and strong-willed. Rock on.

(As of Monday, June 19, 2006, at least 2,503 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to the Associated Press.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear!

I don't listen to the Dixie Chicks' because I don't like country. But I really admire the Dixie Chicks' willingness to speak their minds, especially since their opinions are gonna be really unpopular with the red state crowd that digs their genre of music. Gotta respect that.