Posted by AgentJ on May 13, 2003 at 18:28:23:
In Reply to: The Iraqis will have to learn democracy someplace else posted by AgentJ on May 13, 2003 at 18:24:39:
The Chicks Are All Right
Richard Blow is the former executive editor of George Magazine. He is author
of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and is writing a book
about Harvard University.
You'd think America would have gotten over its fury at the Dixie Chicks by
now.
But no. Ever since lead singer Natalie Maines proclaimed from a London
concert stage that "we're ashamed that the president of the United States is
from Texas," the backlash has come hard and fast and enduring.
Radio stations put out garbage cans in which fans were supposed to -- and
did -- dump their Chicks CDs. The Internet was flooded with images of Maines
embracing Saddam Hussein in a composite photo. A Louisiana radio station
held a "Dixie Chicks Destruction" day. Pictures from the event showing
little boys walking over a pile of CDs are truly chilling; though the
differences are profound, you can't help but feel shades of 1930s Germany.
Even a Maines apology -- crafted to suggest that she regretted the
hyperbolic tone of her remarks, though not the substance -- failed to stem
the hostility. Sales of the new CD, Home, fell by 70 percent and have not
recovered.
It's possible to dismiss this incident as nothing more than a tempest in a
pop-culture teapot, but that would be a mistake. Americans demonstrated an
unsettling impatience with dissent during Gulf II; the prevailing attitude
among war supporters held that critics, especially vocal ones, should be
punished rather than appreciated, squelched rather than heard.
It's difficult, but essential, to understand why. After all, "Red-State"
America has its president, its Congress, its pickup trucks, its NASCAR on
Fox, its domination of the political media, and its war. You'd think that
Red-Staters would be feeling fat and happy. Why then do they sound so
culturally insecure? And why do they manifest that insecurity with such
testosterone-fueled rage?
Much of the answer has to do with lingering sexism within the world of
country music and among white male Bush supporters (the overlap is
substantial). Most of the backlash instigators and participants were men.
The Dixie Chicks are, obviously, women, and in some quarters folks don't
appreciate chicks criticizing a macho, ranch-owning, cowboy boot-wearing
Texan president -- especially when the women are claiming the Texas mantle
for themselves. (Maines comes from Lubbock.)
It's bad enough that the tough-talking corporate cowboys at Enron were
revealed to be lying, sexist crooks. To say that Bush does not represent
modern Texas is to feminize one bastion of American frontier masculinity. It
emasculates Bush and his male supporters, prompting responses ranging from
patronizing to misogynistic. Hence Bush's comment on the matter: "They
shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to
buy their records when they speak out."
The remark is trivializing, sexist and untrue -- none of the women have
lamented that their "feelings" were hurt.
The Chicks are smarter than Bush gives them credit for. They know that the
combination of gender, sexuality and politics is at the heart of this
matter. That's why they posed nude on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.
Scrawled on their skin were epithets they've recently been called: "Saddam's
Angels," "Traitors," "Dixie Sluts." (Notice the equation; any woman who
ventures into a male-dominated arena is slapped down, labeled a tramp.)
This combination of sexuality and politics creates anxiety among Red-State,
red-meat men and probably some "traditional" women as well. The Chicks show
that not only do they have hot bodies, they have something going on upstairs
as well. It is, to use a word that "Blue-Staters" like myself are fond of,
disempowering.
There's also an economic factor at play; the Dixie Chicks are the current
commercial saviors of country music, one of the most successful bands in its
history. They've risen to the top of a musical genre once dominated by men.
In the process, they've broken out of the genre box by attracting cross-over
pop fans, something which country purists tend to eye with suspicion.
It's worth noting that two other country singers, Garth Brooks and Shania
Twain, also broke free of Red-State boundaries by rejecting Red-State
prejudices. Brooks sang in support of gay rights; Twain broke through with
"Man! I Feel Like a Woman," an anthem of female power.
The Dixie Chicks are getting rich in the midst of a recession for which Bush
supporters can't bring themselves to blame the president. No wonder
status-anxious, economically-insecure white men are pissed off. The world is
changing, and they're being left behind.
It matters too that Maines made her statement overseas. Some critics called
that unpatriotic. But it wasn't as if she spoke on hostile shores; the
concert was in England, not France. Still, the Chicks' success in Europe is
another threat to Red-Staters, who are caught up in the process of
globalization, just as we all are, and feel like they have less and less
control over their own economic futures. The Dixie Chicks, however, have
passports to economic success abroad.
And so it's not surprising that some Americans want to take them down a few
pegs. The Dixie Chick-bashers translate their socio-economic anxiety and
threatened masculinity into misogyny, fear and violence. And then they call
it patriotism.
##
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Published: May 01 2003