Vindication: Dixie Chicks dominate the Grammys - The Smirking Chimp: "...It was at one such concert in London, in 2003, that Natalie Maines, the group's lead singer, manifested a degree of political moxy that proved the Dixie Chicks were country artists of a truly different stripe.
Responding to the outrages of the Bush administration, particularly its incessant warmongering, Ms. Maines proclaimed that she was ashamed to share Texas residency with the man who, in time, virtually all of us would finally have to concede is the worst President America has ever known.
What followed was a punishment of epic proportions.
Country music's reactionary, uber-patriotic base abruptly turned on the group that had, just the day before, been its darlings. The worst U.S. blacklist/boycott since the McCarthy era came down hard on the Dixie Chicks. Country radio stations across the land refused to play their work. Their videos disappeared from music television's programming. Natalie Maines became the new Jane Fonda to right-wing talk broadcasters.
Hatred snowballed, eventually leading to death threats.
Through it all, the Dixie Chicks persevered, enduring a stinging, potentially career-killing backlash of the terrible sort that took so many progressive entertainers from glorious fame to utter obscurity during the Cold War Fifties..."
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