Sunday, February 07, 2021

The Dixie Chicks were not anti-war activists

"Oh, the humanity"? Try "Oh, the stupidity."  George Magakis Jr. is so proud of his stupidity that he flaunts it publicly in a letter to PENNLIVE.COM where he wants to warn about concerns (fale) on free speech and concludes with "Just ask the Dixie Chicks what happened to their careers when they opposed Bush-43's war in Iraq."  In what world did the Dixie Chicks oppose the war?


We've been really supportive of them and what was done to them was wrong. 


But they never gave a damn about the war.  They certainly didn't use any of their platforms to call for an end to it so just stop the s**t.


Tubby little Natalie Maines said, "Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."  She said that in London when the concert wasn't going so well and she said that on March 10th.  Before the war started.  The backlash was immediate and their managers tried to manage it by having her make remarks trying to walk it back.  


March 12, 2003, she insisted:


While we support our troops, there is nothing more frightening than the notion of going to war with Iraq and the prospect of all the innocent lives that will be lost. I feel the president is ignoring the opinions of many in the US and alienating the rest of the world. My comments were made in frustration, and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view.


When that didn't work, March 14th she groveled again:


As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect. We are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war. While war may remain a viable option, as a mother, I just want to see every possible alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers' lives are lost. I love my country. I am a proud American


Finally realizing there was no managing it and that the group was now being pulled from the airwaves, they presented themselves as free speech warriors -- with the other two being clear in interview after interview that they supported Natalie's right to say what she wanted but . . .


They did that, in part, to keep Lipton as the tour sponsor.  Framing it as a free speech issue would make the tea bag company look bad if they dropped out the way others already had.  (They were aided by a bad female 'documentarian' who would only get worse and more partisan in the years that followed.  One good documentary in the 70s didn't make the partisan a truth teller.)


The group never opposed the Iraq War.  And Natalie's little attempt to curry favor with a British audience never translated into calls by her for the Iraq War to end.  Nor did she try to help any veterans groups.  She never did a damn thing.


She shot off her mouth and never backed it up.  London was the site of massive protests against the war, the concert wasn't going well, so she nervously adlibbed that statement in an attempt to curry favor.  


She then went into victim mode and went to the well year after year for over a decade and thought it would carry her through two decades.  


"I'm Not Ready To Make Nice"?  I love that song that the group did after the incident.  But let's note that song is not about the war.  Nothing on that entire album was about the Iraq War.  Nothing on that album called for an end to the war.  "I'm Not Ready To Make Nice" was about how sad Natalie's life became after her statement and now she wasn't ready to be nice to the people who had called for her death.


It's got nothing to do with the Iraq War.

Nor did the other track on the album, a single that never charted on any chart, "The Long Way Around," which was more whining, "It's been two long years now since the top of the world came crashing down."  Yes, Natalie, you're 'suffering' topped what was done to the Iraqi people.


Nothing Natalie did after March 10th had to do with the Iraq War and she never worked to end it so let's stop making butterball butt a hero.  She was never a hero.  In her pathetic interviews in the year after those remarks, she back pedaled constantly and made herself the issue over and over and not the war.

She's so good at playing a victim that she thought she could trash her now ex-husband (a friend of mine) in the latest album and the world would play "Oh, poor Natalie!" again.


No, not this time.  She s**t on her fans and she s**t on her bandmates.


And I told Adrian to dump her years ago.  She was selfish and non-supportive as a spouse.  He felt she was shell shocked by all that had happened and stayed in the marriage hoping it would get better.  It was never going to get better.  She was an ugly woman picking fights with others long before the war.  Shooting off her mouth and then whining after.  Her bandmates were already tired of her before March 10, 2003 but they were making good money and had a long career in front of them . . . until Natalie shot off her mouth.


I defended her right to say what she said.  But I never took it as the ultimate in protest action.  It wasn't.  


And while the community against the Iraq War gave to Natalie, she never gave back.  We were as mistreated and taken for granted by her as her then-spouse Adrian Pasdar was.  


He never gave anything but support.  And he suffered because of her remarks but he never took that public and never tried to make it about him.  He suffered and kept it to himself and he supported her when for years after that 2003 tour she could do nothing but rage and rage about how awful the world was to her.  To her.  She didn't want a thing to do with her bandmates at that time -- which is why they did club dates without her.


When they had recorded 2006's TAKING THE LONG WAY, she had a chance at redemption but the album had nothing to say -- yet still won awards -- and she had nothing to follow it with.  She also made no attempts to heal the problems with her two bandmates.



So she went solo and that didn't work out either.  She appeared onstage with Sandra Bernhard to gripe.  She really was a distraction to Sandra's comedy and commentary.  It was all me-me-me.  


She was frozen in rage and it was still all about her.  Not about the US troops who were injured and killed, not about the over a million Iraqi people who were killed or the over one million injured.


It was all about her.


Again, she went to that well one time too many.  And America was bored with her.


And if that was hard on her fans, imagine being married to that.  I was telling Adrian to bail in 2006.  Anyone who knew the couple was telling Adrian to bail by 2009.  She was a lousy spouse and she was never there to share or support, it was always what happened to her in 2003.  Get the f**k over it.  (I've been very kind and kept my criticism here focused on her as an artist and a spouse.  I could tell horror tales of her as a mother but I'm going to try to high road it right now.)


The following sites updated:
















 

Posted by at