Country music in battle over patriotism, free speech (liberal alert)

The Tennessean ^ | 6/2/03 | CRAIG HAVIGHURST

[GailA]

American flags are everywhere as Toby Keith, center, performs Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue at the Academy of Country Music Awards last year in Los Angeles.

As thousands of country fans stream into Nashville this week for Fan Fair, the country music community is wrestling, perhaps as never before, over issues of patriotism and free speech.

[GailA]

FYI

[Paul Atreides]

''If you were just casually listening to country radio in the last year, you would think it was the music of Republicans,''

Oh the humanity! If Republicans like it, it has to be awful, huh? The market decides. If some people want to sing liberal country songs, let them sing them. Let the market decide.

[bigghurtt]

I thought we learned yesterday that country music listeners weren't offended by the Chicks, but that the whole thing was another vast right-wing conspiracy...did these folks not get the memo?

[Revolting cat!]

''If you were just casually listening to country radio in the last year, you would think it was the music of Republicans,'' says Beverly Keel, country music journalist and Middle Tennessee State University associate professor.

The good professor/journalist's statement is so telling it's hard to know where to start.

The Left would like to hijack country music they way it has hijacked Hollywood, the media, the rest of the arts including Chuck Berrys' own genre. They won't rest until country performers start singing odes to AIDS and abortion!

[Only1choice____Freedom]

That's OK I guess, if you turn on the TV you would think the world was Liberal!

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

''If you were just casually listening to country radio in the last year, you would think it was the music of Republicans,'' says Beverly Keel

Oh, dear God! No! NOOOOOOOOOOO -- ! //**sarcasm** :)

[Only1choice____Freedom]

I see, F.U.T.K. is being tolerant too.

[Saundra Duffy]

That corporatewide ban, which affected 41 country radio stations nationwide, has since been lifted,

Too bad the ban was lifted. The clucks have a right to free speech but we have a right NOT TO LIKE WHAT THEY SAY.

[Tax-chick]

Rabble-rousing songs by Toby Keith and Darryl Worley have become smash hits.

I beg your pardon, snot-nosed journalist! We are not "rabble," we are Rednecks!

Xy, the original, unadulterated, polysyllabic, rednect tax-chick!

[Tax-chick]

odes to AIDS and abortion

We've had them: Reba McEntire, "She Thinks His Name Was John," and Tim McGraw, "Red Ragtop."

Wake me up when it's over, please. Does Willie have a new album yet?

[Paul Atreides]

I'd like to know how tolerant the rock industry is, to conservative points of view in songs.

[barker]

Does Willie have a new album yet?

Don't know about an album but did see his new video, Beer for My Horses Whiskey for My Men, with Toby Keith over the weekend. They play cops in it. Guns and everything ;-)

[dead]

Funny that the only people they could find bemoaning the "situation" in country music were journalists.

[sweetliberty]

"Rabble-rousing songs by Toby Keith and Darryl Worley"

Rabble rousing?????

"The environment, she says, may be leading to self-censorship"

Didn't that used to be called using good judgement or self-discipline or just a sense of propriety? Good grief these idiots are touchy!

"...the Dixie Chicks' right to be on the radio"

That's a right now??? I don't remember that one. I guess I must have been absent from civics' class that day.

"I think that tolerance is evaporating in society at large"

I think the author is being overly optimistic. < /sarcasm > But even if that were true, that would be a step in the right direction in my opinion. We have for far too long tolerated much more than we ever ought to have.

" Tim McGraw added video of troops being deployed to Iraq to his performance of The Cowboy In Me. Lonestar made a new video of the 2-year-old hit I'm Already There into yet another tribute to the troops"

Is it just me, or is there a venomous contempt for the troops seeping out of this whine?

"'When those albums diminished, there wasn't another swell of females behind them to fill that void.''

I'm so glad the NOW nazi quarter has been heard from. Sheesh. How about the natural ebb and flow of the industry, moron?

"That could be remedied to a large degree, he notes, by getting past the Dixie Chicks controversy and getting them back on the air."

That's all fine and good, but what is the good of putting them back on the air if the listeners don't want to hear them? Oh, I guess it must be that right to be on the radio thing again.

[bigghurtt]

where are you from in arkansas?

I am a harrisonite living in maryland now.

[sweetliberty]

"I'd like to know how tolerant the rock industry is, to conservative points of view in songs."

Silly FReeper! Tolerance only involves US putting up with THEIR opinions. How dare you suggest that they should have to put up with ours! Back to the re-education camp with you.

[sweetliberty]

I'm in Pine Bluff...for the time being anyway. I like northwestern Arkansas much better though.

[Tax-chick]

new video, Beer for My Horses Whiskey for My Men, with Toby Keith

We love it! I've always thought Toby Keith was just the cutest thing, and Willie has more presence at 70 than most people ever do!

My 9-yo son asks us whenever we put on a CD, "Is it like that one with Toby Keith?"

[bigghurtt]

not a big pine bluff fan.

watson chapel kicked my butt in the playoffs the last football game I ever played in, and they were less than sportsmanlike in their response.

[GSWarrior]

''Faith (Hill) and Shania (Twain) were so hot at the same time that they sort of dominated the charts,'' he says. ''When those albums diminished, there wasn't another swell of females behind them to fill that void.''

There are countless female country performers who are twice as talented as Hill and Twain but don't comfortably fit the Nashville "image" and who are more concerned with making good music than appearing on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Kelly Willis and Allison Moorer come to mind.