That may well be the case ... it is however largely irrelevant to my point - which was that your characterization and rendering of the Crime of Treason was flawed and inaccurate, with respect mostly to what actually constitutes adhering to an enemy and giving aid and comfort.
I got your point. But it wasn't my personal characterization, it was how the America public characterized it. It was in the context of two paragraphs nestled in between one that ended with how it changes when you do it on foreign soil and the other than ended with the dim view that Americans took upon it.
To be critical of the actions of one's government doesn't necessarily imply any great fondness for an "enemy" (real or imagined), their ideology, or their cause ... indeed, one might have entirely selfish and unsympathetic motives (as in non-foreign) for doing so (ie. loss of American lives, blood & treasure, etc.)
That's very true, but
"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all," isn't being critical of the government, it's taking sides, in a foreign country, against it. And that's precisely how many Americans viewed it. And I don't know that I disagree with that view. However, more than anything I think she was a young, idealistic liberal who shot her mouth off without thinking and then got defensive because she thinks she should be able to say anything she wants without consequences.
BTW re: public considerations on Maines opinion - what they might have been considered at one point in time, may have very little bearing on what they would be considered at present.
In this context the word prescient comes to mind for some odd reason ...
I dunno, depends on where she said it. Public opinion is still keeping the Dixie Chicks off the vast majority of radio, and off all but 6 Country stations owned by Cumulus, according to industry rag RadioInfo. In 2003 the Chicks were getting an average of 3200 spins per radio station per year, on 1990 Country stations. That's more than 6 million times their songs were played on the radio. In 2011 they got 11,239 spins on 1998 Country stations. That's 5.5 per station, with more than half of those coming from the 6 Cumulus stations that will play them. ]
As WYCD Detroit Operations Manager and Program Director Tim Roberts noted back last month,
“We are still not playing them in rotation as a portion of our audience continues to push back on them in research and in a very vocal way (complaints). We actually did a phone topic on it a few months ago and the negatives still far outweighed any positive comments or support.”
It's not a case of free speech or anything like that, it's a case of,
Do you want this record on your radio station?
Clearly the fans spoke with their dollars, but also just as clear (to me, anyway) is they were led and spurred on by the Nashville Establishment who owns the Country Music radio stations. Natalie Maines stood fast on something she believed in, and cut off her nose to spite her face to do it. But the Nashville Establishment did the same thing to themselves.
Possibly the most untold story of the Dixie Chicks’ saga is the sonic repercussions the boycott and eventual demise of the band has had on Country music as a whole. The Dixie Chicks were a traditional country band, especially by today’s perspective. They wrote most of their own songs, played traditional acoustic instruments like fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and guitar, and featured tight three-part harmonies. The Chicks benefited greatly from the resurgence in interest in American roots music and bluegrass (spurned in no small part by the release of the movie
O Brother Where Art Thou in 2000). The Dixie Chicks were helping to usher in a more acoustic, more traditional era in country music, where the music is what mattered most, and were the biggest-drawing, best-selling artists in country music at the time; the biggest thing since Garth Brooks in Country, and one of the biggest acts in all of American Music period.
Meanwhile the opposition to the Dixie Chicks and the person at the opposite end of the political, sonic and gender spectrum was Oklahoma’s Toby Keith. He symbolized the loud, electric, arena rock approach to Country music that is still heavily in place in country music today. Toby positioned himself as the antithesis of the Dixie Chicks, and ended up becoming the best-selling artist in country in the decade of 2000. Toby’s flashy, rock-style arena show thrived while the Dixie Chicks’ stripped down, acoustic approach quickly dwindled back into obscurity in Mainstream Country after Natalie's comments. When you see bands today like Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, and The Avett Brothers, you see that the stripped-down, acoustic approach to music is still relevant, if not the most relevant approach today in
popular music. But it’s had to move outside of the Country music fold to find a present-day outlet.
Reflecting back on the Dixie Chicks and the public fallout, it is hard to not see that the Country music community’s reaction was rash, unmeasured, unfair, and overall, unhealthy for its future. Country music not only black balled a band that was offering sonic leadership to the genre on how to move forward while still respecting the roots of the music and remaining commercially viable, they lost one of the genre’s greatest economic engines that brought in massive numbers of new Country listeners, and have long-term fumbled their ability to benefit from the universally-relevant appeal of acoustic American roots music.
But most unfortunately, the event leaves Country Music with a black eye as a genre who can’t respect artists regardless of their beliefs. The typecasting of the Country music fan as a closed-minded, politically-intolerant, chest-beating animal is a legacy it will take Country music a long time to shake. Much longer than 10 years.
