I'm Proud The Dixie Chicks Are From Texas

(Photo: AFP/Robyn Beck)

Last night, at the Grammys, the Dixie Chicks were nominated in 5 categories:

Record of the Year
Song of the Year
Album of the Year
Best Country Album
Best Country Duo/Group Performance

They won them all. That means they couldn't have earned more Grammys this year if their lives depended on it. Any one of those first three trophys is an artist's Powerball jackpot. Now everyone is going to want to get visited by the RNC's pretty little hate machine.

On the eve of the Iraq invasion, Natalie tossed the following out to her cheering fans at a private concert in London: "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."

As Oges says on his Natalie-dedicated page at VirtuaLubbock.com:

If you've had the opportunity to look about virtualubbock, you'll see that we're all about freedom, creativity, courage, dedication to convictions, love, and happiness. I believe those are the best things we learned growing up in West Texas. I believe they are what America and Texas is all about. Because she lives those values in a true manner, Natalie is one of our great heroes.

Here are 5 interesting facts related to Natalie's remark:

1) George Bush isn't from Texas, he's from Connecticut, and he went to college in Connecticut (Yale) and Massachusetts (Harvard), like the rest of his family. Now, his parents may have bought a house in Midland when he was 2, but all 3 of the Chicks are actually from Texas, born and raised. They're able to tell who is and who isn't.

2) Calls to radio stations ordering a Chicks boycott originated from the offices of the Republican National Committee and the South Carolinan Republican Party.

3) Clear Channel management eagerly allied itself with the RNC attack, at a time when it needed Republicans to relax media ownership limits (circumventing antitrust law). 5 Years before, Clear Channel CEO Tom Hicks bought the Texas Rangers off of George Bush, making him a multi-millionaire.

4) Sales of Toby Kieth's "Boot in the Towel-head's Butt" album (RNC/Clear Channel-promoted), in 2003: 1.8 million
Sales as of today: 4 million

Sales of Dixie Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier Anti-War" album (RNC/Clear Channel-boycotted), in 2003: 2 million
Sales as of today: 6 million

5) During the '03 boycott, not only did the Chicks sell out every city they played (making the Guinness Book of World Records for most successful female act in history, where they remain), they won four Grammys (incl. Best Country Album), two American Music Awards (Favorite Country Album, Favorite Country Band), and became the best-selling country artists ever. While touring under death threats.

If you order a boycott of a band, and then have a hard time finding one of their concert tickets or CDs to toss into a bonfire, because they're sold out, your boycott isn't going very well.

Is it a stretch to say that the Chicks actually were rewarded for speaking out against the Bush administration, and the Iraq invasion? After all, a recent song goes like this:

It's a sad, sad story that a mother will teach her daughter
That she ought to hate a perfect stranger,

And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge,
That they'd write me a letter
Saying that I better
shut up and sing or my life will be over?

Those lyrics won the Grammy for "Song of the Year."

Here's what Dubya had to say about the Chicks and the boycott (spoken with the same firm grasp of the issue as any other he's been forced to ponder as president): "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street."

By "some people," he meant "RNC cudgels;"
By "don't want to" he meant "were told not to;"
By "buy" he meant "radio play."
And apparently by the last bon mot, he meant to say that if we act like we're free, we'll get chased down the street.

In the end, what happened was, someone from an old and respected West Texas family publicly remarked about the President. That it's shameful for a raised-right Texan to behave like Bush and his people. While graciously implying, to my awe, that he might even be from here.

I leave us with my favorite Dixie Chicks song that my kids and I will sing at the top of our lungs in the car:

Just look out around us
People fightin' their wars
They think they'll be happy
When they've settled their scores

Let's lay down our weapons
That hold us apart
Be still for just a minute
Try to open our hearts

To more love
I can hear our hearts cryin'
More love
I know that's all we need
More love

To flow in between us
To take us and hold us
And lift us above
If there's ever an answer
It's more love