Dixie Chicks ... PETA & Alec Baldwin

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.tabloidcolumn.com/dixie-chicks.html


Dixie Chicks & Alec Baldwin

Fighting For 'Center Square'
on The Hollywood Squares?

BY JAKE EASTON
R a d o k P r e s s

Updated March 30, 2003

Alec Baldwin, Poster boy for Hollywood has-beens, may have his center square in jeopardy now that the Dixie Chicks join the ranks of cheap Bush bashers

After hitting number one for their country album "Home" in the United States, Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks decided to throw a sucker punch at President Bush while on a concert tour in London on March 10th.

Maines told the London concert audience,

"Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."

If they were looking for a reaction, they certainly didn't have to wait long. Radio stations across the country have been busy dropping their music like a rock. Angry phone calls flooded Nashville radio station WKDF-FM on Thursday, some calling for a boycott of the Texas trio's music.

Jeff Garrison, program director for KILT in Houston said, "People are shocked, we've got them off the air. They cannot believe Texas' own have attacked the state and the President," Garrison said.

At Dallas radio station "99.5 The Wolf," program director Paul Williams said, "the comments touched a deep nerve in Texas because they came from one of the biggest country groups to come out of the state and were directed at a President who calls Texas home."

WDAF-AM (610), 61 Country, in Kansas City even held a Dixie 'chicken toss' party, where Chick critics were encouraged to dump the group's tapes, CDs and concert tickets into trash cans. WDAF program director Ted Cramer said about 100 people showed up, and the 125 or so CDs collected will be shipped back to the band's record label.



From the Dixie Chicks website:

3/12/2003 - "We've been overseas for several weeks and have been reading and following the news accounts of our governments' position. The anti-American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding. While we support our troops, there is nothing more frightening than the notion of going to war with Iraq and the prospect of all the innocent lives that will be lost."

3/14/2003 - (Maines) "As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect. We are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war. While war may remain a viable option, as a mother, I just want to see every possible alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers' lives are lost. I love my country. I am a proud American."



Founding Chicks sisters Martie Erwin Maguire, 33, and Emily Erwin Robison, 30, have not said whether they agree with the outrageous statement, but their silence seems telling. If they are as furious as most of America, they must be pondering their decision to dump former lead singer, Laura Lynch, who they replaced in 1995 with the loud-mouthed Maines.

Strike Two. Natalie Maines, 28, previously escaped scrutiny last year, when she called country singer Toby Keith's pro-America song 'Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,' "ignorant," and said the tough-talking song "makes country music sound ignorant." No boycott was ever called.

Apparently Maines didn't learn much after the September 11 attacks. The American people have become much more patriotic, and while there are many opinions about the war in Iraq, there are also many casualties for those that speak out on subjects that are considered by many as un-American.

The outrage includes angry letter drives and petitions mass-mailed to studios and networks taking on the likes of Martin Sheen, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Susan Sarandon, Nelson Mandela, Jesse Jackson, and others, for their antiwar views.

Many of these letters and petitions wrongly call the liberal groups and their allies "traitors," but undoubtedly, the Dixie Chicks will be prominently added to the list, and it certainly won't do much to increase their fan base.

A new use for duct tape. At KSCS/96.3 FM in Arlington, the station took a poll from its listeners Friday, and as of Monday morning 93.2% said "No they don't agree with her comment." The station's Web site included a picture of the Chicks with tape added over Maines' mouth. "Natalie Maines is not paid to espouse her ideas on stage," veteran morning host Terry Dorsey said in an interview on sister station WBAP/820 AM. "A lot of people get up on stage and start talking about something they know nothing about."

This opinion is echoed by many, where celebrities go shooting off their mouth, then run for cover once they are exposed.

On March 6, Frontiers of Freedom (FOF), a non-profit think tank, sponsored a public debate between ten of Hollywood's loudest antiwar activists - and military experts, about the war in Iraq. George Clooney, Mike Farrell, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, and Barbra Streisand were among those invited to the National Press Club in Washington, DC ? but NONE of the celebrities showed up for the event.

Despite the continued shock and outrage, Maines still doesn't get it. On March 12, she added on the official Dixie Chicks website, "One of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view."

As the Dixie Chicks are quickly finding out, the American people are also free to voice their opinion on whether or not to buy their albums and concert tickets.

Strike Three. New York Post columnist Neal Travis reported on August 10, 2000 that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had enlisted the country gal band to strip for PETA against fur. The story also ran in USA Today on the same day. There were immediate denials from the Chick's camp. "The Dixie Chicks do not support PETA," said Maura Mooney of Front Page Publicity, the group's Nashville-based public relations firm. ("E-mail blasting Dixie Chicks hits false note," Roanoke Times & World News, Aug. 15, 2000).

Assuming the Chick's response was truthful, the media immediately dropped all PETA-Chicks stories.

Fur Flies. The Chicks then started showing off a "Got Milk?" ad, to 'prove' they didn't support PETA. Unfortunately, pictures speak louder than words, and the resulting 'cover-up' is the final straw for many fans whose intelligence has been underestimated by the Chicks for years. (about PETA)

In the most recent controversy, the Chicks only started clucking to a different tune - and releasing a lame apology to the President - days later after watching their CD sales plummet, support for their U.S. concert tour evaporating, 29 percent of country stations refusing to play their music, and [update] a 42% slide in record sales in the stores.

At a precarious time when U.S. troops need our support the most, one would think that the Dixie Chicks would be smart enough to understand the sensitivities of the American people, and realize the last celebrity to be so vocal about Bush is now 'Center Square' on Hollywood Squares.

Concert Schedule: The Dixie Chicks plan to kick off a U.S. tour for their new album "Home" on May 1 at the Bi Lo Center in Greenville, SC - although with the recent events unfolding, they would probably feel more at "home" performing at the concert venue, Hippodrome de Paris Vincennes.

Alec Baldwin, if you still remember him, is the former husband of Kim Basinger, who is best known for repeatedly denying that he would leave the country if George W. Bush were elected president. His most recent denial was in an AP article where although denying the statement, he now says he is staying long enough to get rid of (both) George W. Bush, and his brother Jeb in Florida.
The first to deliver the news of his threatened departure was his (then) wife, Kim Basinger, in an interview with the German magazine Focus.

According to Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log in The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal, during that interview conducted shortly before the election, Ms. Basinger held forth on her husband's character and principles. "Alec is the biggest moralist that I know. He stands completely behind what he says." She could, further, well imagine Alec making good on his threat to leave. "And then I'd probably have to go too."

Deluged by adverse publicity once the story reached the U.S., Alec Baldwin explained that his wife had never talked to that magazine, that she had never heard of it, and that he had never made any such comments about his leaving America.

Focus magazine then produced a transcript, which forced Baldwin to provide a variety of other explanations. "The studio forces you to do dozens of interviews with people you never heard of," he told the New York Daily News, and, moreover, he and his wife had certainly "never said unequivocally" that they would leave the country if Bush had won.

UPDATE: According to a recent Tallahassee Democrat article, Alec Baldwin is once again in the news by comparing the 2000 presidential elections to the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Baldwin told a Florida A&M University audience that the war makes it hard for Bush critics to remind voters of "this other disaster that we faced in this country - a disaster that has done as much damage to our country as any terrorist attack could do."

"I know that's a harsh thing to say, perhaps, but I believe that what happened in 2000 did as much damage to the pillars of democracy as terrorists did to the pillars of commerce in New York City," Baldwin said.

With his career in the dumpster, and not having a hit movie since The Hunt for Red October in 1990, Baldwin has since been seen with buddy Rosie O'Donnell, and - when he can get it - taking the "Center Square" on Hollywood Squares.