Since the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted and we have no freedom of speech in King George BusHitler's America, how come they are still mouthing off, bad mouthing their former fans and most of the rest of America, starring in a new documentary, getting articles written about them, having videos in number one rotation on VH1 for weeks, and on the cover of magazines? And how come they are still way richer than me?
Being blacklisted and having no freedom of speech must mean something very different from what I always thought it meant.
Obviously, as a conservative, I'm going to tend to think that more people on the right just "get it" about more things than folks on the left.
That's part and parcel of aligning yourself ideologically with other people. You aren't going to align yourself with people you consider amoral morons, and you aren't going to align yourself in opposition to people you consider smart, thoughtful, moral folks.
But, no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, some things just seem so obvious and so "common-sensical" that you believe that acceptance of these ideas should simply transcend political boundaries.
Whether or not you are my sworn enemy in almost every area, we should be able to agree on, say, the general color of the sky, the current temperature, the existence of gravity, or our mutual need for oxygen.
Yet, on political issues that would seem to the partisan idealogue to be such transcendent, "common sense" matters, there are fundamental disagreements. On the left, such an issue might be global warming. Many on the left consider global warming a rigorously proven fact, and the "fact" that man is the cause of it so obvious as to be beyond questioning or review. Yet many on the right consider global warming to be unproven, that man's impact on the environment could cause such change extremely questionable, and the advocates of global warming remarkably similar to all doomsayers of all previous ages. Whose predictions of incipient destruction also failed to materialize.
Another more contemporary issue might be the one of "torture". To many on the left, anything remotely harsh in dealing with prisoners should be considered, common-sensically, to be torture. Additionally, it's simply self-evident to many of those folks that torture is immoral, and should never be used under any circumstances, no matter who was being tortured and how many lives might be saved by the revelation of valuable information. Another self-evident truth in that mix is that "torture doesn't work", because people will say anything to make the torture stop.
The conservative might argue that this would logically include disclosing any actual information they might have that would save lives, because if they would say anything, that would include verifiable data that would stop the current torture and carry with it promises of future protection--and a future resumption of "torture", should his information turn out to be false. Additionally, the conservative might argue that rough and psychologically manipulative techniques are not torture in the same way that cutting off fingers or wiring up car batteries to nipples are torture, and to equate them is both irrational and irresponsible. But these arguments don't make a great deal of headway against the wide-eyed disbelief that these extra-chromosome right-wing simians are actually defending torture! My God, they're worse than we thought!
Which brings me to the main subject of the article, which is the Dixie Chicks. As a conservative, it is just common sense to most of us that freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from criticism for what you say. It just "makes sense" that if you make public statements about controversial subjects, some folks might decide not to do business with you for that reason, and they have every right to decide to do business with (or buy the albums of) whoever they choose. Businesses, including radio stations, have the right to play whatever music they want to. If you say things in public that make those businesses uncomfortable about doing business with you, don't be surprised if that business dries up.
Do I really care what the Dixie Chicks think about anything? No. Why should I? It's clear they have zero influence in changing the political views of their fans and former fans. Do I think they should have been boycotted or--for pete's sake--had their albums burned? No. All I have to say to people who burn anything as a form of political statement, whether it's record albums or flags or conservative college newspapers is: grow up. Have something intelligent to say about the issue you are so inflamed about, and communicate it. Join some grass-roots organization to effect change. Any moron can set something on fire (or run over it with a bulldozer) and, when it comes to political statements, people who burn things to make a point are, in my mind, uniformly morons.
And if I found out a company I did business with was burning a bunch of Dixie Chick's albums, and I could get what they supplied somewhere else, I'd go somewhere else. Because that's my right, and the First Amendment does not prevent me from deciding not to do business with, or buy the product of, people who demonstrate to me in a public manner that they are, in fact, twits.
So why do so many on the left consider the guarantee of free speech to be a guarantee of a captive audience? Why do they believe that freedom of speech should prevent negative reaction to and criticism of that speech? Another question might be why most folks on the left applauded McCain-Fiengold, which was actually the government passing laws to regulate political speech, which is an actual abridgement of our First Amendment rights by the entity--the government--that the First Amendment was specifically designed to protect our free speech rights from. It can't be because it was a strictly Democrat initiative--John McCain authored it with Democrat Russ Fiengold, and the evil George Dubya Bush signed that piece of crap into law. But that digresses into another "common sense" issue that really isn't (that abridgement of political speech by any individual or group, for any reason, no matter how noble, is unconstitutional and, in the long run, a negative). And I should probably just stick to the main issue. And that's mouthy southern women.
So. Let's play a game. Can you guess what the editorial slant of Shut up and Sing, which cribs its name from a superior book by Laura Ingraham of the same name, a movie tracing the history of the Dixie Chick controversy, from singing the national anthem of the fallout from Natalie Maines' comments about president Bush? Liberal or conservative? Left or right? Come on. Guess. It'll be fun.
I haven't seen the movie, but I have seen the trailer for the movie. And from the silly tagline on the poster ("Freedom of speech is fine, as long as you don't do it in public.") to implication that the nutjobs sending death threats to the Dixie Chick's are somehow typically conservative (or, let's be honest, typically American) or are unique to any one side of the political spectrum (try and find a prominent conservative who has not received death threats specifically for what they believe and what they speak publically about), I think the editorial slant is pretty clear.
In the trailer, there is a quote from Bush on the Dixieflap that is exactly right: "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt because some people don't want to buy their records." Natalie Maines was offended and indignant, but Bush was dead on. The anti-Bush comment was one of many Natalie Maines has directed at the many folks in redstate America that she clearly has such distaste for, and when you offend your primary audience, and clearly don't care if you offend your primary audience ("Not Ready to Make Nice"), and then move on to become even more offensive, don't be surprised that people don't buy (or sometimes even stock) your albums, and don't be surprised that the radio doesn't want to play you. And don't expect a lot of sympathy. There are thousands of talented country acts out there, and most of them don't get airplay and most of them can't get stocked at Wal-Mart, and most of them have never had the kind of money that Natalie Maines used to have to spend on her shoes.
Of course, most of those acts never said some other things either. Like:
I don't want to be played on those [Country radio] stations. And when I watched people smashing our CDs I just thought, Good. Smash 'em. Please don't listen to me. I had no idea you thought I was one of you, because I'm not.Which is not only calculated to offend her main audience, but is clearly an endorsement of exactly what they were doing. She didn't want the dumb redstate hicks that had been making her rich to buy her music. She only wants smart liberals and urban elites to buy her music, or she doesn't want anybody to buy it. She's getting exactly what she wants. Really, it couldn't have turned out better for her.
Wait, though. She's not done.
And I don't want to go to any [country music] award shows. And if we did win, what would I get up there and say? I have nothing to say to these people.And by "these people", she means the people who used to buy her music, before they found out she hated them and thought they were idiots.
And, while she wouldn't take back what she said about Bush, or the hicks that bought her music against her will, she would take back her already back-handed apology:
It was all mine--nobody made me apologize and nobody wrote it for me--but when I look back and read it, I don't stand behind what I said. That will make people extra-mad, because some were like, "Well, at least she apologized."Martie Maguire, one of the other Chicks, said:
We don't feel a part of the country scene any longer, it can't be our home anymore.Maguire also had this excellent thing to say with her free speech:
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.Again, making the point that they don't want any of the folks who were buying their music to have bought it in the first place, and that they are now in a much better situation since they have freed themselves from the redneck menace. Good for them.
In June 2006 Emily Robison made this comment to the Telegraph in the UK about country music videos that showed soldiers and American flags (eww!):
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.In same interview, Natalie Maines said:
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.In 2003, the American Red Cross refused a million dollar "donation" from the Dixie Chicks, something that is apparently made issue of in the movie, because it's in the trailer. And it's implied that refusal was because there were Bush administration people on the board, and that it was a string-free donation. The reality is a little more complicatecd.
According to National Red Cross spokesperson Julie Thermond Whitmer, the band would make the donation "only if the American Red Cross would embrace the band's summer tour". That summer tour being the one where Natalie Maines had recently revealed her penchant for controversial political statements. Julie Thermond Whitmer explained:
The Dixie Chicks controversy made it impossible for the American Red Cross to associate itself with the band because such association would have violated two of the founding principles of the organization: impartiality and neutrality... Should the Dixie Chicks like to make an unconditional financial donation to the American Red Cross, we will gladly accept it.Interestingly, not only do the Dixie Chicks, despite being so terribly oppressed (although they like that better because it was actually more oppressive when all those backwards rednecks were buying their records), still have a wide audience, are still richer than you or me, still get to say whatever they want to all sorts of people, and still get their words (many of them critical not just of Bush but of redstate America and America generally) in national and international publications.
But apparently, if you piss people off with what you say--even if you also say that you wanted to piss those kinds of people off and didn't want them listening to you in the first place--your free speech rights have been abridged or taken away from you. I think that's one of those things where I'm going to have to say, from my point of view, most of the folks on the left just don't "get it".
And they aren't going to. Just last month, an ad for Shut up and Sing was turned down by NBC (part of a publically held media company that has always reserved the right to turn down in advertising they deemed inappropriate). The smaller CW--which needs money--also rejected the ads. Oppression! Discrimination! But, local affiliate stations of all five major broadcasters, including NBC and the CW, ran ads for the film in Los Angeles and New York, the only two cities the film actually opened in on the day of the ads. Nevertheless, Harvey Weinstein complained in a press release:
It's a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America.Wow. The Dixie Chicks get on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and Time, get interviewed by The Telegraph and Dier Speigel and a dozen other national and international magazines, get their latest video on the top spot on VH1 for two weeks, are still selling plenty if not going platinum and having more trouble with the tours, but are still richer than any of us are ever likely to be while getting to freely insult the people (and their beliefs and lifestyles) that helped make them so rich in the first place . . . well, hell's bells, I want to be blacklisted like that, too!
You want to talk blacklisted? Talk to M.C. Hammer. Talk to Vanilla Ice. Talk to C&C Music Factory. Talk to Donny Osmond. That list goes on and on and on. And I don't see them on the cover of time, or with a million in pocket change to bribe the Red Cross with.
No comments:
Post a Comment