| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Dixie Chicks Not Ready To Make Nice (And Neither Are
Former Fans)
The Dixie Chicks are back from exile. They’ve got a new
album, they’re doing interviews and they're plumb dang full of
sassy attitude. Take one of the singles off the album, for
instance: “Not Ready to Make Nice.” Gee, I wonder what that’s
about?
Unfortunately for former fans, that sassy attitude is the
same one that got them pretty much shunned from country
music after lead singer Natalie Maines bad-mouthed George W.
Bush while onstage in Britain during the run-up to the Iraq
war.
Hey, everybody has the right to criticize the president and
the war if they want to. But when you’re in the field of
entertainment, it would help your career to be a little more
savvy about the core values of your primary target audience.
So, for instance, since fans don’t come any more patriotic and
flag-waving than those who follow country music, common
sense says you steer away from public and gratuitous anti-
Bush, antiwar remarks.
Maybe it was the intoxicatingness of being in another, more
sophisticated country and performing before a presumably
more enlightened audience that caused Maines to succumb to
the unfortuitous urge to bash the president who hails from her
home state of Texas, the fact of which she was so ashamed. And
at that moment and in that place, her comment was probably a
real crowd-pleaser.
But modern telecommunications being what they are, the
word got back in a hurry to the country faithful in the States
and before you could say “no blood for oil,” the Chicks were
being avoided like a batch of bad moonshine. They definitely
picked the wrong genre of music through which to express their
discontent with the Bush administration’s handling of
contemporaneous geopolitical exigencies.
That was three years ago and now they’re back, not only
with a new album, but on the cover of Time magazine as well,
where they appeared in what seems to be a mutually protective
embrace, staring into the camera unsmiling and defiant.
Underneath the large headline, “Radical Chicks,” is the line,
“They criticized the war and were labeled unpatriotic.” You
know, as if to suggest that such is the fate of all dissenters in
the stifling, McCarthyistic atmosphere that has prevailed since
right-wing warmongers pulled off their coup and took the
White House.
And as if to suggest that just because the Dixie Chicks
disagree with the war doesn’t mean they’re not every bit as
patriotic as any country music fan.
But the Chicks’ own words put the kibosh on any such
suggestion. No, not in the Time article because the issue isn’t
even raised there. But it was raised in a subsequent interview
with a British newspaper and any country fans who want to give
the Chicks the benefit of the doubt in the patriotism
department will be sorely disappointed.
In that interview the Chicks first complained about the lack
of support from other country artists. Said Emily Robison: “A
lot of artists cashed in on being against what we said or what
we stood for because that was promoting their career . . . A lot
of pandering started going on and you'd see soldiers and the
American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of
ultra-patriotism."
Well sure, what could be more sickening than a strong
display of patriotism?
Then Maines got right down to the crux of the matter. "The
entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand
the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot?
About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where
you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country . .
. I don't see why people care about patriotism."
There you have it, country music fans, straight from the
horse‘s mouth. The Chicks aren’t simply patriotic dissenters
who got a bad rap. They are utterly clueless about why anybody
would be patriotic for any reason!
It wouldn’t be gentlemanly to suggest that they‘re dumb as a
box of rocks, but these are the statements of people who seem
to be profoundly and abysmally ignorant of the dangers in
today’s world, unappreciative of how good they have it in their
home country and clueless about how it got that way and what
it takes to preserve it.
Anyway, Maines needn‘t worry about the “entire country“
not agreeing with her. That’s because the country is crawling
with Bush-hating America-bashers who not only agree with her
questioning of the need for patriotism, but who sympathize
with terrorists and actually hope America will be defeated in
Iraq. But most of those people aren’t listening to country
music.
When it comes right down to it, just how country are the
Dixie Chicks, anyway? Their new album, “Taking the Long
Way,” is being described as a shift from country to pop. One
review says they “are now savvy, sophisticated urbanites . . .
like they’ve stepped out of ‘Sex and the City’ -- and the music
reflects that. It’s rooted in . . . country-rock . . . but sounds
more suited for upscale apartments and coffeehouses.”
Fine. There’s no law that says the Dixie Chicks have to
continue the country charade with all its oppressive baggage,
such as the expectations of patriotism. If they prefer “Sex and
the City” to Haggard and Twitty, more power to ’em. Like it
said in the Time magazine article, “This is what talented
musicians are supposed to do: aspire to get better, braver.”
Chick Marty Maguire summed it up pretty well in Time: “I’d
rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it,
who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than
people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba
McEntire and Toby Keith. We don’t want those kinds of fans.
They limit what you can do.”
In other words, stick it in your ear all you Reba and Toby
lovers. The Chicks are leaving all you white trash, country
bumpkin losers behind -- and saying good riddance while they’
re at it. They’re movin’ on up to bigger and better things.
They’re looking to cull a new audience of “really cool people”
from “upscale apartments and coffeehouses” and get shed of all
their old fans who were mainly just filling up America’s
decidedly unsophisticated trailer parks and rural route
addresses.
Maybe the Dixie Chicks will find happiness with their new
peeps. The old peeps aren’t likely to be too broken up over
their departure from country. They’re “not ready to make nice”
either.
Former Fans)
The Dixie Chicks are back from exile. They’ve got a new
album, they’re doing interviews and they're plumb dang full of
sassy attitude. Take one of the singles off the album, for
instance: “Not Ready to Make Nice.” Gee, I wonder what that’s
about?
Unfortunately for former fans, that sassy attitude is the
same one that got them pretty much shunned from country
music after lead singer Natalie Maines bad-mouthed George W.
Bush while onstage in Britain during the run-up to the Iraq
war.
Hey, everybody has the right to criticize the president and
the war if they want to. But when you’re in the field of
entertainment, it would help your career to be a little more
savvy about the core values of your primary target audience.
So, for instance, since fans don’t come any more patriotic and
flag-waving than those who follow country music, common
sense says you steer away from public and gratuitous anti-
Bush, antiwar remarks.
Maybe it was the intoxicatingness of being in another, more
sophisticated country and performing before a presumably
more enlightened audience that caused Maines to succumb to
the unfortuitous urge to bash the president who hails from her
home state of Texas, the fact of which she was so ashamed. And
at that moment and in that place, her comment was probably a
real crowd-pleaser.
But modern telecommunications being what they are, the
word got back in a hurry to the country faithful in the States
and before you could say “no blood for oil,” the Chicks were
being avoided like a batch of bad moonshine. They definitely
picked the wrong genre of music through which to express their
discontent with the Bush administration’s handling of
contemporaneous geopolitical exigencies.
That was three years ago and now they’re back, not only
with a new album, but on the cover of Time magazine as well,
where they appeared in what seems to be a mutually protective
embrace, staring into the camera unsmiling and defiant.
Underneath the large headline, “Radical Chicks,” is the line,
“They criticized the war and were labeled unpatriotic.” You
know, as if to suggest that such is the fate of all dissenters in
the stifling, McCarthyistic atmosphere that has prevailed since
right-wing warmongers pulled off their coup and took the
White House.
And as if to suggest that just because the Dixie Chicks
disagree with the war doesn’t mean they’re not every bit as
patriotic as any country music fan.
But the Chicks’ own words put the kibosh on any such
suggestion. No, not in the Time article because the issue isn’t
even raised there. But it was raised in a subsequent interview
with a British newspaper and any country fans who want to give
the Chicks the benefit of the doubt in the patriotism
department will be sorely disappointed.
In that interview the Chicks first complained about the lack
of support from other country artists. Said Emily Robison: “A
lot of artists cashed in on being against what we said or what
we stood for because that was promoting their career . . . A lot
of pandering started going on and you'd see soldiers and the
American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of
ultra-patriotism."
Well sure, what could be more sickening than a strong
display of patriotism?
Then Maines got right down to the crux of the matter. "The
entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand
the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot?
About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where
you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country . .
. I don't see why people care about patriotism."
There you have it, country music fans, straight from the
horse‘s mouth. The Chicks aren’t simply patriotic dissenters
who got a bad rap. They are utterly clueless about why anybody
would be patriotic for any reason!
It wouldn’t be gentlemanly to suggest that they‘re dumb as a
box of rocks, but these are the statements of people who seem
to be profoundly and abysmally ignorant of the dangers in
today’s world, unappreciative of how good they have it in their
home country and clueless about how it got that way and what
it takes to preserve it.
Anyway, Maines needn‘t worry about the “entire country“
not agreeing with her. That’s because the country is crawling
with Bush-hating America-bashers who not only agree with her
questioning of the need for patriotism, but who sympathize
with terrorists and actually hope America will be defeated in
Iraq. But most of those people aren’t listening to country
music.
When it comes right down to it, just how country are the
Dixie Chicks, anyway? Their new album, “Taking the Long
Way,” is being described as a shift from country to pop. One
review says they “are now savvy, sophisticated urbanites . . .
like they’ve stepped out of ‘Sex and the City’ -- and the music
reflects that. It’s rooted in . . . country-rock . . . but sounds
more suited for upscale apartments and coffeehouses.”
Fine. There’s no law that says the Dixie Chicks have to
continue the country charade with all its oppressive baggage,
such as the expectations of patriotism. If they prefer “Sex and
the City” to Haggard and Twitty, more power to ’em. Like it
said in the Time magazine article, “This is what talented
musicians are supposed to do: aspire to get better, braver.”
Chick Marty Maguire summed it up pretty well in Time: “I’d
rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it,
who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than
people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba
McEntire and Toby Keith. We don’t want those kinds of fans.
They limit what you can do.”
In other words, stick it in your ear all you Reba and Toby
lovers. The Chicks are leaving all you white trash, country
bumpkin losers behind -- and saying good riddance while they’
re at it. They’re movin’ on up to bigger and better things.
They’re looking to cull a new audience of “really cool people”
from “upscale apartments and coffeehouses” and get shed of all
their old fans who were mainly just filling up America’s
decidedly unsophisticated trailer parks and rural route
addresses.
Maybe the Dixie Chicks will find happiness with their new
peeps. The old peeps aren’t likely to be too broken up over
their departure from country. They’re “not ready to make nice”
either.