I went to the rally and was amazed at the size of the crowd in such lousy weather. My guess: 500-1000 very enthusiastic America supporters. Only drawback was lack of a decent sound system for (people) speakers. There were plenty of cops and news trucks. My favorite sign: "First Iraq, then France, then Hollywood." On the way home, I surfed the radio to WBAP's "The Jerry Reynolds Auto Advice Show" in which Jerry and co-host Kevin McCarthy were talking about the war. Jerry read
an open letter from him to the troops that really resonated with me.
Excerpt: "In your honor, I've thrown all my Dixie Chicks CDs away. I change the station when I hear one of their songs. I will go out of my way to not support the so-called "celebrities" who do not join me in supporting you. I'll change the channel, skip the movie or switch the station before I'll give any of them the satisfaction of believing they can influence how I feel.
These "celebrities" should be ashamed of themselves for using their power in the media to question your motives. I'd LOVE one of them to look your mom or dad or husband or wife in the eyes and say those things. And I'd like to see their credentials as experts on foreign policy."
I'd copy and paste the letter except that it's a JPEG.
I got the latest copy of "Entertainment Weekly" in the mail today, and they have an article about the Dixie Chicks (whom I used to like back when they were a cowgirl quartet without Natalie Maines, playing dinner music for me at Joey Tomato's Italian restaurant here in Dallas). EW could drop an anti-Bush liberal spin into a review of a Barney video, so, like Rolling Stone, they tried to downplay the damage by noting that the album went up a bit on the pop chart (sales still dropped by 22,000 copies, and it only went up because the other albums around it sold even less). All that means is that the fans they kept are pop fans, who tend to be very fickle and burn CDs off the Internet instead of buying them, while alienating country fans, who are more likely to support an act for a lifetime.
They ended on a quote from a Nashville record company weasel saying that they'd probably sell more CDs because everyone's talking about them. What a pantsload. I work in radio syndication and am in contact with stations worldwide on a daily basis. The way country music fans and DJs are talking about them is NOT going to translate into higher sales. If they think all publicity is good for sales, then check out Michael Jackson's sales trajectory since the early '90s.