They said it in my town

The Dixie Chicks are not ready to make nice...via Egalia at the Tennessee Guerilla Women today (or via Frank at Left of Dial some time ago).

Yep, they're coming out with a new album and they are unrepentant.

For the record, I didn't like what they said:

"Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," singer Natalie Maines told the audience. . . .

and I'm ashamed they said it my town - at a gig in London three years ago. There ya go.

But I have some sympathy with the sentiment - after all, I'm not too pleased that GW is in the White House, either. I voted against him and I wish he hadn't won. But I think it might have been a little better to say, "As a proud Texan, I hate that that awful George Bush and I share the same home state," rather than to say something that's a slap to regional pride - that sounds as if no president from Texas could be good.

My Texas expat friends didn't think it was too clever either. Around that time it was hard enough to be American in London. There was a lot of overt, palpable hostility against Americans and against me as an American (from people who ought to have known better) that I won't find easy to forget. The Dixie Chicks comment made it harder to stay out of the fray, and there was an expectation that every American should be denouncing the President, the actions in Iraq, the whole American way of life... or else we were all rabid right-wingers and slayers of Iraqi infants. I made a decision to keep my mouth shut at work, to say nothing for or against the war, nor to be tempted into personal attacks on G.W. and I suffered for it.

But none of that excuses the way the Dixie Chicks were treated. Sure, don't buy their records. I was mad enough that I didn't. When I played their music at a party a couple of years ago, Texas friends said "Isn't that the Dixie Chicks?" - "Yep," I said. "But I didn't pay for it. I downloaded it!" Which seemed to be OK But don't threaten them with death. In their own words:

It’s a sad sad story when 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
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I can see why they're not ready to make nice, though I am. Go and listen to their single Not Ready to Make Nice here...and when their album is released, I'll be buying it.