CBS Lets Dixie Chicks Rant about 2003 Threat

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Apparently it's old news week at the broadcast networks. After hyping the year-old revelation about the NSA's telephone record program, CBS has invited the Dixie Chicks, the formerly popular country music group whose penchant for spouting liberal platitudes alienated their fan base, to talk about death threats they received in 2003.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the Chicks' appearance on "60 Minutes" this Sunday is to promote a new album, but the lead of CBS's online promotional piece about the interview focuses entirely on three-year-old threats.There's apparently an effort to "make news" here most likely, but it's so feeble as to be laughable.

Any person who cuts even a slightly bigger-than-average public profile has received death threats. Doing a story on them is of questionable value; doing one on threats received in 2003 can only be attributed to the fact that the Dixie Chicks are liberal. Much-reviled conservative women like Linda Tripp or Katherine Harris both received many death threats but were never granted interviews with "60 Minutes" to talk about their experiences in a sympathetic manner.

I found this section of the story amusing in its contradictory nature:

A recent single the band released, called "Not Ready to Make Nice," speaks to the band's state of mind three years after what they call the "the London incident."

In the 60 Minutes segment, the band refuses to apologize to country music fans who were angered by Maines' remarks or to "make nice" to the radio stations that refused to play their music. When asked by Kroft why the band just doesn't try to make country music fans happy, Maines tells him that's not the way the Dixie Chicks work. "We don't make decisions based on that. We don't go, 'OK, our fans are in the red states, so I'm going play a red, white and blue guitar and put on my I Love Bush T-shirt,'" she says. "We're not like that because we're not politicians. We're musicians," Maines tells Kroft.

In other words, the Dixie Chicks aren't apologizing for making political remarks because they're not political. Makes a lot of sense to me.