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Dixie Chicks launch full-frontal attack - "not...standing their ground...pushing it even farther"
The Dallas Morning News ^ | April 25, 2003 | By TOM MAURSTAD / The Dallas Morning News

Posted on 04/26/2003 11:35:34 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP

Dixie Chicks launch full-frontal attack


04/25/2003

By TOM MAURSTAD / The Dallas Morning News

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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In the tradition of mainstream magazines featuring nude celebrities on their covers (Janet Jackson on Rolling Stone, Demi Moore on Vanity Fair), the Dixie Chicks are positioned in such a way – a hand here, a leg there – that no private parts are exposed. Such attention to the technicalities of nudity does nothing to diminish the provocative nature of the image.

(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.

The Dixie Chicks ... stirring up more controversy with their upcoming <I> Entertainment Weekly </I> cover photo.
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


Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/042503dnovechicks.18b99.html


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To: auggy
Submitted for your approval, a pictorial representation of the state of the Ditsy Chimps minds --


81 posted on 04/26/2003 1:07:38 PM PDT by Bonaparte
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To: Bonaparte
LOL!

They are as dumb as they look in that picture.

Good job...

82 posted on 04/26/2003 1:10:34 PM PDT by auggy
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To: GailA
I watched our local Memphis ABC 24 News after the interview, which I DID NOT watch. Maines said and I quote "I'm ASHAMED OF OUR FANS".

She said that??????

83 posted on 04/26/2003 1:11:53 PM PDT by Carolina
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To: RoseofTexas
Did the Ellen Degeneres show last forever?

Sure, she was funny for a while, but she shared with us more than we ever wanted to know about her. Slick and Monica did too, but the liberal media backhoes just kept shoveling the sh*t at us.

There comes a time when the public just says "Enough is enough, we've SEEN AND HEARD your act already! Clean out your desk and take your 15 minutes with you!"

84 posted on 04/26/2003 1:13:33 PM PDT by Wondervixen (Ask for her by name--Accept no substitutes!)
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To: MeeknMing
"If they wish to continue a career in entertainment".....

Looks like they might need check with Michael Moore,
maybe he's casting for extra's (non-SPEAKING) in his next
*big* flick. Hope he cast all the "Hollyweirdo's" who
can't keep their "un-American" yaps shut, in his LAST
flick.......we could have one BIG boycott & put 'em all
in their place at one time.

btw.. haven't I read somewhere that even LASSIE's pic was
air brushed for the cover of TV guide??, and HE looked
much better than these chicks....HE even passed for a "she" for years..


85 posted on 04/26/2003 1:15:09 PM PDT by txdoda ("Navy-brat")
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To: Bonaparte
LOL ! Great post.

August 12, 2002 - Fat Dixie Chick Spouts Off

86 posted on 04/26/2003 1:16:53 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP (Bu-bye Saddam! / Check out my Freeper site !: http://home.attbi.com/~freeper/wsb/index.html)
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To: GailA
Thanks, bttt ! . . .

. . . They say they are ashamed of a good, decent and GOD fearing man, who only has the good of ALL America in mind, yet they STRIP NAKED and aren't ashamed some 5 year old might see it when they go to the doctors? Doesn't compute, is illogical which is typical of LIBERAL air heads.

87 posted on 04/26/2003 1:27:54 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP (Bu-bye Saddam! / Check out my Freeper site !: http://home.attbi.com/~freeper/wsb/index.html)
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To: Bonaparte; maxwell
ROFL !
88 posted on 04/26/2003 1:28:52 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP (Bu-bye Saddam! / Check out my Freeper site !: http://home.attbi.com/~freeper/wsb/index.html)
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To: Geezerette
Yep, it's true. Here she is wearing a gift from her brother-in-law, Omar the tentmaker --

A great unsolved mystery -- why do Natalie and hubby never take a raft along on their river rafting trips?

89 posted on 04/26/2003 1:30:59 PM PDT by Bonaparte
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To: Bonaparte
. . . Omar the tentmaker

hehe ! You're on a roll !

90 posted on 04/26/2003 1:33:02 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP (Bu-bye Saddam! / Check out my Freeper site !: http://home.attbi.com/~freeper/wsb/index.html)
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To: GailA
Great post.
91 posted on 04/26/2003 1:42:32 PM PDT by Once-Ler (I vote Dubya)
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To: Wondervixen
Do You Have Psychic Powers?

Take This FREE Psychic Institute Test And Find Out!

The nickname of the girl in the middle is

A. Twiggy

B. Bones

C. Porky


92 posted on 04/26/2003 1:44:57 PM PDT by Bonaparte
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To: Eaker
Is this Natalie Maines' REAL body?

Yes. 5%
No 11%
No bleeping way! 84%
93 posted on 04/26/2003 1:54:39 PM PDT by HuntsvilleTxVeteran (CCCP = clinton, chiraq, cristein, and putin = stalin wannabes)
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To: annyokie
Sure that's her body. Just not all of it.
94 posted on 04/26/2003 2:02:17 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (This tagline has been banned.)
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To: Bonaparte
Maybe she's wearing thick clothes.
95 posted on 04/26/2003 2:12:58 PM PDT by Ima Lurker
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To: Jeff Chandler
"Just not all of it."

Yeah, here's the rest of her.


96 posted on 04/26/2003 2:17:23 PM PDT by Bonaparte
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To: cherry_bomb88
>>"....there are other tools in Adobe Photoshop 7 besides airbrushing that would allow them to make her look slim...<<

The first thing I thought of when I say the mag cover was that they had used either the eraser tool or the smudge tool to eliminate a portion of her posterior. Her face, belly, arms, and breasts look as if they've been worked on, too.
97 posted on 04/26/2003 2:17:32 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (This tagline has been banned.)
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To: Bonaparte
 
Look at he arms, look at the shoulders, look at the (facial) cheeks. That ain't her on the cover.

98 posted on 04/26/2003 2:20:21 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (This tagline has been banned.)
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To: Paul Atreides
I don't think they are lying about the airbrushing.

It was probably a whole crew of house painters.

In fact the next tour should be sponsored by Sherwin Williams.

99 posted on 04/26/2003 2:21:18 PM PDT by DainBramage
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To: dwilli; FITZ; annyokie
Practically everyone on mag covers are "fixed" in to some degree.

My girls and I went to a seminar on food disorders and body image and one of the ladies speaking brought a video from the companies that do the computer stuff with these pictures. From what we learned, even Cindy Crawford is not what you see on the mag covers. They take off inches here and add stuff there on her, too.

They're lying if they said the "Dixie Chunks" cover was printed with, "no tricks".
100 posted on 04/26/2003 2:26:29 PM PDT by valleygal
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