June 02, 2006
The Dixie Chicks Fake Victimhood
I do enjoy making fun of the Dixie Chicks. In the confederacy of dunces that is America 2006, their music and general behavior are particularly ripe for humor. I have to expect a South Park episode dedicated to them at some point. They're just begging for it. But there is one specific angle of their foolishness that really does wipe the smile off my face, and brother Blogcritic Mark Saleski walked right into it with this story today. So then, I will drop the humor for a minute in order to be real unmistakably clear about this. As I'm responding to his story specifically, I'll address my comments to Brother Saleski. Not to put too fine a point on it Mark, but your hand wringing here for poor little victim Natalie is utter bullshit. She is stirring this stuff up absolutely on purpose. In short, their claims of victimhood are as fake as their pre-processed, homogenized corporate country music cheese food product. It absolutely IS a bunch of WHINING from Natalie Maines, milking a couple of isolated threats for a cheap claim on victimhood. They're MILKING, MILKING, MILKING a few lame threats to get some cheap martyrdom points. But FAR WORSE, "Not Ready to Make Nice" specifically and their behavior generally carefully demagogues the situation to smear ALL critics of the band as evil, drooling, violent fascist haters. This is FAR worse than her couple of silly off hand comments about Bush. Life is full of threats from nature, and from humans. LOTS of people get death threats. I've had a couple. It's unfortunate, but that's life. If you find the people doing such things, bust them down and lock them up. But don't smear the other 99.9% of critics who are doing no such thing. That is malicious, wicked and evil on the part of the Dixie Chicks. The original outburst three years ago was overblown, yes, but not entirely unreasonable. Whichever way you want to look at the wisdom of our entry into Iraq, it's a critical point of life and death for the country. People who felt that Maines' comments were out of line and bad for our country had just as much right to protest as she does- even if some of it was an overreaction. But now SHE and the other Dixie Chicks are the ones PURPOSELY stirring up hatred. They could have let that sleeping dog lie, and made their normal record and pretty much everything would be largely forgotten. They'd probably be king of the roost at country radio again. Instead, they are purposely spreading hatred and divisiveness, and using it as a marketing tool. Maines went well out of her way to tell the Time magazine reporter that Bush is due "no respect whatsoever." That's not disagreeing with Bush, or criticizing his policies, but merely purposely and calculatedly fanning flames of hatefulness. Feel sad for poor Natalie if you want to, but that just makes you a sucker- cause she absolutely WANTS this spite. She LIKES feeling angry, as she said IN SO MANY WORDS to the Time magazine reporter. It's an "awesome" feeling to be mad and KNOW you're right. She LOVES it. By the way, while we're talking about haters, spreading disrespect and de-humanizing people, why don't you direct some of that exquisite sensitivity back at the Dixie Chicks. There are LOTS of examples in their current media campaign. Just for starters, think for a minute about Martie's disavowal in that same article of all those stupid people whom she doesn't even WANT as fans because they like Reba McEntire. You go around talking like that, gratuitously disrespecting people for no needful reason, expect some negative energy in return. Mostly, I'm bemused by the situation. It's an entertaining confederacy of dunces all around. It's fun mocking their foolishness, and it's all helping them sell their wares. Good times. However, I do get a bit pissy about just exactly this one angle that you're playing in this story. The Dixie Chicks and their supporters following their lead are smearing and de-humanizing the opposition. They are in fact trying to intimidate non-believers such as myself from making any substantive criticism under threat of ostracism and malicious de-humanization as an evil, violent, irrational hater. This is pretty near exactly what they're accusing others of. It's classic, wicked demagoguery. I'm not having ANY of it. Critics go way too far in casually using words like "treason" against the Dixie Chicks, but trying to dishonestly tar the opposition like this in order to silence or discredit critics absolutely IS un-American. Labels: country_music, dixie_chicks
posted by Al at 6/02/2006 05:14:00 PM
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