Protesting the Dixie Chicks

I'm curious to see this. At the very least, you don't have to see the Dixie Chicks themselves blathering nonsense -- not a note from them in this film. Looks to be a fairly unbiased documentary, though I don't think it will be popular with the people who loved the Dixie Chicks documentary, "Shut Up and Sing."

Don't care enough about the dixie buzzards to protest them

Bob Wills is still the king!

I bet it would be popular with at least ONE of the seven or eight people who loved the Dixie Chicks documentary.

(tune: Travelin' Soldier, chorus)

ooh, I'm so sick
of listening to the Dixie Chicks
they stink and they're so boring
listen to them, you'll soon be snoring
They like Saddam Hussein
'Tween the three of them you won't find half a brain...

The other night I went to see a concert in Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. Over the stage it says "The Home of Bob Wills". Lot of history in that place.

What Natalie should have done by the way was say something like "Well, we just don't like the President and what he did. Sorry but that's how we feel". Eventually country radio
might have welcomed them back (and in some cases stations have), but insulting their fanbase (country fans)
was what really made some people turn against them. I'm sure they were upset that some stations put a boycott on, spurred by fans, but they should have just said what I just mentioned and waited it out.

"Oh, we're not considering ourselves country (any more), we're rock/pop."

The "Not Ready to Make Nice" song referred no doubt to people getting upset over the 'We're upset Bush is
from Texas comment' but people can also interpret it as their giving the finger to their country fan base
ON TOP OF the post-remark comments.

Basically:
We're upset at what the President did and we're ashamed he's from Texas.
We're upset country radio boycotted us.
We're upset that those ig'nant redneck dumba-- country fans got upset at us.
We're upset that people stayed away from our tour and we had to cancel some dates.

What Nat should have done was just leave it as "OK, this our opinion, for what it's worth"--the further
insult of their fanbase is what turned off many people. And the expectation that they're entitled
to the airplay and people buying their albums. People used their right to NOT buy the album or NOT
see them on tour, and the gals say "oh! You're violating our free speech!"

I'm not from Texas but if I were were, I'd be ashamed of the Dixie Chicks for THAT alone.

You guys really need to stop wasting your time on earth complaing and bashing the chicks and get on with other things in your short time on earth. Just go home, and forget the chicks even said that. It's just one opinion out of the 6 billion people on earth. Just sad you guys spend your time on here doing the krap.

But we're having more fun bashing them than they are
bashing the Prez! :)

Yeah, but I figure that whoever put them up to it knew exactly what they were doing. They are playing for Hollyweird now. They will probably win a bunch of Grammy's for their new songs and even an oscar for their performance in the movie. Then they will win an Emmy for a show on PBS.

After that they will go on all the talk shows and the new congress will even give them a medal or some special recognition for speaking out against the President.

Then we'll see pictures of them with Jesse Jackson and Cindy Sheehan at some rally somewhere complaining about the war.

This is soooooo predictable.

A friend used to send me tapes of a folk show from WKSU
in Kent, OH; for some reason, the host started playing some Dixie Chicks songs right around the time the controversy
came out. The same guy (Jim Blum) was doing a show on the day Clinton was impeached and he referred to "...on this dark day in our history"...

This comment was in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"The Dixie Chicks get WAY too much credit for the whole Bush remark. Yes, it was a cool thing to say in the first place, but am I the only one who remembers all the gutless backpedaling and damage control they subsequently engaged in? Their Diane Sawyer interview/apology was a giant butt kiss of Bush and the record buying public. Now everyone makes them out to be a bunch of 'tell it like it is, consequences be damned' beacons of free speech. It's simply not true."

Revisionist history makes the world go 'round. LOL.

The whole thing was orchestrated from the very beginning. They thought they would be the Eminem of country and exploit controversy to move into rock and become rock stars. Am i supposed to believe its was mere coincidence that cameras just happend to be rolling (and havn't stopped since) during the comments in 2003, but no footage of it was ever released until their movie was released 3 years later to help prop up a failing album? What do i look like? A DUmmie who will believe everything the MSM spoon feeds me? Get the (radio edit) out of here! The following review nails them for the frauds they are. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06335/742592-120.stm 'Shut Up and Sing' Dixie Chicks refuse to leave well enough alone in candid documentary Friday, December 01, 2006 By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 'Shut Up & Sing' As the Post-Gazette's country music critic, I found it easy to support The Dixie Chicks' 2002 release of "Home," perhaps the best mainstream country album of the past decade. After singer Natalie Maines' notorious 2003 gaffe sparked an anti-Chicks backlash among the group's core audience, I took some heat from readers for continuing to support their music. During subsequent years, I continued to separate the art from the artists as the Chicks appeared to do the opposite of damage control, further alienating themselves from a country music community that had made them rich and famous. Now, in a candid backstage documentary sarcastically titled "Shut Up & Sing," I find Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire conspiring with manager Simon Renshaw to intentionally deepen the rift separating the group from its fans. They're clearly shown planning ways to get the media to buy into the group's pleas of right-wing victimization, and trying to turn the anti-Chicks phenomenon into the band's defining element. That's it. I'm appalled. I've had it with these Chicks. The most remarkable thing about "Shut Up & Sing" is that although it's not a hostile documentary taking shots at the band, it reveals its members to be smug, arrogant and manipulative, intentionally growing the monster that cripples their career, then whining about it to the press. Think I'm exaggerating? Not long after Maines tells a London crowd the group is "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck take us into a dressing room for a damage-control meeting. Quickly, it morphs into something far more nefarious when Renshaw suggests a counterintuitive tactic: instead of taking conciliatory steps to mend fences with fans, what if they could stoke anti-Chicks sentiment and instigate CD burnings and further rejection of the Chicks by the country music audience? It's not a quip -- Renshaw says it with relish, implying that the Chicks might then be seen as free-speech heroes by the much larger mainstream music audience. You can almost hear the "ca-ching" in his voice as he lays out plans for using the incident to move the group out of the country camp and into the mainstream. Throughout the 93-minute film, Renshaw and the Chicks repeatedly conspire to provoke country music fans. On the set of an Entertainment Weekly photo shoot, a publicist stridently argues against allowing one of the world's top-selling bands to appear nude on the cover with self-deprecating insults like "Dixie Sluts" written across their bodies. She loses the debate. Renshaw later offers talking points for a nationally televised interview in which the group insults its former fans. Renshaw is revealed as the Chicks' brain. In meetings, Maines blabbers and whines like the protagonist in a dumb blonde joke, while sisters Robison and Maguire are more guarded but seem willing to go along with just about anything. "Shut Up & Sing" documents The Dixie Chicks belittling the conservative values of country fans and manipulating the media into reporting that the group is valiantly defending free speech. It's a ruse. From their pre-Maines cowgirl sweetheart origins through their successful mainstream country career, their songs have never been political. They voice no cohesive political doctrine in the film, other than to express a general opposition to the Iraq War and a pointed hatred of George W. Bush. Their claim of a conspiratorial radio "boycott" attempting to silence them is pure spin -- after years of playing to the values of country culture, they simply lost their audience when they abandoned those ideals. The filmmakers reveal the entire Chicks fiasco for what it is: a ploy to turn a minor gaffe into a major career move -- the intentional alienation of an artist's core audience in hopes of springboarding to a larger and more lucrative demographic. By their own admission, it hasn't worked. As such, "Shut Up & Sing" is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of what may be one of the most blatant media scams in entertainment history. Kopple, who won Academy Awards for pro-labor films "Harlan County, U.S.A." and "American Dream," and Peck, who was among the producers of Kopple's HBO special "The Hamptons," take a nonlinear filmmaking approach, backtracking to the London gibe, hop-skipping to the band's reaction, jumping to planning sessions and concert footage, and flashing forward to meetings with producer Rick Rubin, who helps the Chicks to make their first non-country album. The digital cameras are rolling as the group discusses ways to spin the rerouting of a failing concert tour to make it seem like a win. They're witness to the creative process when songs are born and arrangements evolve, and they observe the human process when the artists collapse into the arms of loved ones. Don't be surprised if movie critics and left-leaning documentary film audiences adore "Shut Up & Sing" and the right-leaning country crowd ignores it. As for me, my left-brain film critic knows a good movie when it sees one, and my right-brain music critic, which took heat for supporting the Chicks, knows when it's been snookered. Frankly, I just wish they'd just shut up and sing.

damn i forgot to page break....lets try it again...

The whole thing was orchestrated from the very beginning. They thought they would be the Eminem of country and exploit controversy to move into rock and become rock stars. Am i supposed to believe its was mere coincidence that cameras just happend to be rolling (and havn't stopped since) during the comments in 2003, but no footage of it was ever released until their movie was released 3 years later to help prop up a failing album? What do i look like? A DUmmie who will believe everything the MSM spoon feeds me? Get the (radio edit) out of here!

The following review nails them for the frauds they are.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06335/742592-120.stm

'Shut Up and Sing' Dixie Chicks refuse to leave well enough alone in candid documentary Friday, December 01, 2006 By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 'Shut Up & Sing' As the Post-Gazette's country music critic, I found it easy to support The Dixie Chicks' 2002 release of "Home," perhaps the best mainstream country album of the past decade. After singer Natalie Maines' notorious 2003 gaffe sparked an anti-Chicks backlash among the group's core audience, I took some heat from readers for continuing to support their music.

During subsequent years, I continued to separate the art from the artists as the Chicks appeared to do the opposite of damage control, further alienating themselves from a country music community that had made them rich and famous.

Now, in a candid backstage documentary sarcastically titled "Shut Up & Sing," I find Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire conspiring with manager Simon Renshaw to intentionally deepen the rift separating the group from its fans. They're clearly shown planning ways to get the media to buy into the group's pleas of right-wing victimization, and trying to turn the anti-Chicks phenomenon into the band's defining element.

That's it. I'm appalled. I've had it with these Chicks.

The most remarkable thing about "Shut Up & Sing" is that although it's not a hostile documentary taking shots at the band, it reveals its members to be smug, arrogant and manipulative, intentionally growing the monster that cripples their career, then whining about it to the press.

Think I'm exaggerating? Not long after Maines tells a London crowd the group is "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck take us into a dressing room for a damage-control meeting. Quickly, it morphs into something far more nefarious when Renshaw suggests a counterintuitive tactic: instead of taking conciliatory steps to mend fences with fans, what if they could stoke anti-Chicks sentiment and instigate CD burnings and further rejection of the Chicks by the country music audience? It's not a quip -- Renshaw says it with relish, implying that the Chicks might then be seen as free-speech heroes by the much larger mainstream music audience. You can almost hear the "ca-ching" in his voice as he lays out plans for using the incident to move the group out of the country camp and into the mainstream.

Throughout the 93-minute film, Renshaw and the Chicks repeatedly conspire to provoke country music fans. On the set of an Entertainment Weekly photo shoot, a publicist stridently argues against allowing one of the world's top-selling bands to appear nude on the cover with self-deprecating insults like "Dixie Sluts" written across their bodies. She loses the debate.

Renshaw later offers talking points for a nationally televised interview in which the group insults its former fans. Renshaw is revealed as the Chicks' brain. In meetings, Maines blabbers and whines like the protagonist in a dumb blonde joke, while sisters Robison and Maguire are more guarded but seem willing to go along with just about anything.

"Shut Up & Sing" documents The Dixie Chicks belittling the conservative values of country fans and manipulating the media into reporting that the group is valiantly defending free speech. It's a ruse. From their pre-Maines cowgirl sweetheart origins through their successful mainstream country career, their songs have never been political. They voice no cohesive political doctrine in the film, other than to express a general opposition to the Iraq War and a pointed hatred of George W. Bush.

Their claim of a conspiratorial radio "boycott" attempting to silence them is pure spin -- after years of playing to the values of country culture, they simply lost their audience when they abandoned those ideals.

The filmmakers reveal the entire Chicks fiasco for what it is: a ploy to turn a minor gaffe into a major career move -- the intentional alienation of an artist's core audience in hopes of springboarding to a larger and more lucrative demographic.

By their own admission, it hasn't worked.

As such, "Shut Up & Sing" is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of what may be one of the most blatant media scams in entertainment history. Kopple, who won Academy Awards for pro-labor films "Harlan County, U.S.A." and "American Dream," and Peck, who was among the producers of Kopple's HBO special "The Hamptons," take a nonlinear filmmaking approach, backtracking to the London gibe, hop-skipping to the band's reaction, jumping to planning sessions and concert footage, and flashing forward to meetings with producer Rick Rubin, who helps the Chicks to make their first non-country album.

The digital cameras are rolling as the group discusses ways to spin the rerouting of a failing concert tour to make it seem like a win. They're witness to the creative process when songs are born and arrangements evolve, and they observe the human process when the artists collapse into the arms of loved ones.

Don't be surprised if movie critics and left-leaning documentary film audiences adore "Shut Up & Sing" and the right-leaning country crowd ignores it. As for me, my left-brain film critic knows a good movie when it sees one, and my right-brain music critic, which took heat for supporting the Chicks, knows when it's been snookered.

Frankly, I just wish they'd just shut up and sing.

And you signed up TODAY just to tell us this?

What....you related to them?

I see Natalie won herself a big ole award from the ACLU last night.

She is on their payroll. Did an ad campaign for them. I think Bill Maher got one too...also on their payroll.

I dont know who is the bigger ass. I am leaning towads gnat, but after Bill dressed up as the crocodile hunter, with a sting ray in his chest and blood all over him for Halloween, id say he is giving gnat a run for her money. Peas in a Pod. Neither one of them have very many friends that are not related or not employees.

Bill Maher is probably making an animal rights statement out of the costume whereas Natalie Maines is just trying to please whatever crowd she happens to be around.

I hope you're wrong. I hope to God you are wrong.