DIXIE CHICKS: (Singing) And I will try to connect all the pieces you left. I will carry it on and let you forget. And Ill remember the years when your mind was clear. How the laughter and life filled up this silent house.
Ms. MAINES: Ill get over the sadness of the song, but then Ill play it for my mom or my sister or my dad and then Ill start crying again, because theyll cry because its the first time theyve heard it. And my grandfather hasnt heard it yet. Hell have to turn his hearing aid on for once. But I also, you know, like the fact that hell get to hear it.
BLOCK: Yeah. Theres a good deal of anger on the album and a couple of songs that talk about I guess what you call the incident back in 2003, thats one way of putting it, in England when Natalie, you talked about being ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas, where youre from. Im wondering first if you had any idea, Natalie, when you said that, did you imagine at all how big a deal that statement, those words would become?
Ms. MAINES: No. Or I wouldve thought of something way better to say. No, I said it, you know, in a club in London in front of maybe 2000 people, 1500, 2000 people and just being in London during that whole time before the war, they always grouped Americans together. Like we all thought the way that the president thought. Yeah, I felt like I just wanted to let those people know just because were Americans and especially from Texas and play country music, you cant put us in that category. I didnt want them thinking that we believed in that war when we didnt.
Well, like Dennis Prager says, clarity is better than agreement. Only thing they didn't explain was this: Why did they care what foreigners thought of them, or their politics? Sales? Transnational progressivism? Just wanting to be liked? Or was their hatred of GWB that strong, that they had to proactively propitiate the British America-bashers?
If I had been in their position, and a President I loathed were in office, I'd have shut up and sung.
