Posted on 04/26/2003 11:35:34 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Dixie Chicks launch full-frontal attack
04/25/2003
You're a platinum-selling country star riding a record-setting wave of popularity. But a few weeks ago, you made a comment during a concert that has angered and alienated your core constituency.
What do you do?
If you're the Dixie Chicks, you pose naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.
This latest move is likely to turn up the flames on a controversy that has been burning for more than a month. That's a feeling echoed by program directors at the area's two leading country-music stations, neither of which has played a Dixie Chicks' song since early March when singer Natalie Maines told a London audience she was ashamed that President Bush is from Texas.
Under the headline "Dixie Chicks Come Clean," the May 2 issue shows the country-music trio posed in a pyramid of bare skin. Across their torsos are painted phrases – "Traitors," "Saddam's Angels," "Shut Up!" – drawn from the volumes of letters and e-mails the band has received.
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(And in answer to the first question this photograph will spark, an Entertainment Weekly spokeswoman asserts: "That's them, their bodies. There were no computer tricks, no airbrushing.")
With the women's unflinching stares into the camera and the blurb's promise of "Country's Controversial Superstars Take on Their Critics," the cover is striking, even defiant.
"We wanted to show the absurdity of the extreme names people have been calling us," fiddle player Martie Maguire says in the story.
AP The Dixie Chicks ... stirring up more controversy with their upcoming Entertainment Weekly cover photo. |
The attention-getting cover story comes on the heels of the group's interview this week with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Primetime Thursday . Publicity campaigns undertaken by celebrities who have fallen from their public's graces are nothing new. But traditionally the celebrity is practicing some form of damage control – a high-profile mea culpa or by going silent on the subject.
But not the Dixie Chicks. Far from throwing water on the fire, they seem to be throwing gasoline.
"What this reflects is that the old damage control just doesn't work anymore because everybody knows the playbook," says Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture and television at Syracuse University. "Everybody is so media savvy now that if you apologize, people just dismiss it as what your consultant told you to say."
A band representative on Thursday said the singers had no comment on the cover photograph or the interview. But others in country music certainly have.
"I don't know that they'll ever be as big with the country audience as they used to or as important to the country audience as they used to be," says Paul Williams, program director of KPLX-FM (99.5) "The Wolf."
"At first I thought it was a joke," says Ted Stecker, program director for KSCS-FM (96.3), of the Entertainment Weekly cover. "I don't think it's a good move for them right now.
Unlike other outspoken celebrities, such as rocker Sheryl Crow or activist director Michael Moore, whose anti-war comments have generally been applauded by their fans, the Dixie Chicks' comments play against country music's bedrock fans.
"You could write off the comment that started all this as something said in the excitement of the moment," says Leo Braudy, author of The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History. "But what's going on now is the result of calculation.
"It's a pretty striking strategy. Rather than backing down and appearing on the cover waving a flag or dressed in military uniforms, they are not just standing their ground, they're pushing it even farther."
Staff critic Mario Tarradell contributed to this report.
E-mail tmaurstad@dallasnews.com
It's possible. On a related note, I hear Ramsey Clark leans to the left.
Now that's showing "bush"hehe ! Time for a bump now !!
Meaning no disrespect, I can't help posting this . . .
Hey ! I resemble that remark !
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