The Dixie Chicks won big at the Grammy’s tonight. They won five awards, including “Song of the Year” and “Album of the Year.” Though I don’t agree with their politics (understatement alert!), I think their album “Taking the Long Way” is great. My favorite performance of the night, however, was the opening act by The Police. The reunion was long overdue, but they didn’t miss a lick.
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Dixie Chicks Abandoning Dixie
My wife and I are fans of the Dixie Chicks–at least when they are not saying things that are so over-the-top offensive that we feel like joining the boycott. As many of you know, the Dixie Chicks have been on the outs with their fan-base ever since Natalie Maines zinged President Bush during a concert in London in 2003. But when I talk about offensive rhetoric, I am not talking about their politics. What I am talking about is reflected in some recent comments by Martie Maguire:
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Shut up and Sing . . . On Second Thought, don’t sing either.
Newsweek magazine reports that pop artists are jumping on the Bush-bashing bandwagon (click here for the story). From Pink, to Paul Simon, Neil Young, Bruce Springstein, and even to Merle Haggard, they’re all coming out to beat up on Bush.As Newsweek points out, the interesting thing about this latest round of protests is that unlike Vietnam era protests which were aimed at “the establishment†and “the man†in general, these protests are focused rather narrowly on President Bush. For these entertainers, Bush is the personification of political and imperial evil.