Dixie Chick Maines Says She Was 'Defending America' With 'Genius' Remark

Continuing their endless media blitz to promote their latest album, the Dixie Chicks were Larry King’s guests May 31. When asked by King about her 2003 remarks at a London concert where she said she was ashamed that President Bush was a fellow Texan, lead singer Natalie Maines maintained that her "genius" comment was spontaneous and that she believed she was "defending" America.

Natalie Maines: They [the comments] were not planned. That genius comes to me off-the-cuff...I felt like I was defending America by saying that we don’t all think the same and you can’t just call us Americans like we have one voice and one opinion.

Whatever her intentions may have been, her swipe at the President was read by many fans of the group as an easy way to score some applause from a friendly audience overseas.

Maines took a cue from the Hillary Clinton playbook and blamed the "far right" for feeling "embarrassed and self-conscious" around members of the armed services:

Maines: The far right sort of takes it upon themselves to label liberals as less patriotic or not supporting the troops, and that has always really bothered me, and any time I saw a soldier in the airport or anywhere I felt embarrassed and self-conscious like they were thinking that I didn’t like them or I didn’t support them, and that just wasn’t true.

Maines, responding to a fawning caller’s question:

Caller: How do you now feel about 70 percent of America right behind you, right on your side of the wide open spaces and loving everything that you say and, at least most of us do, does it give you a warm fuzzy feeling?

Maines: ...It doesn’t give me warm fuzzies, it gives me hope that, you know, I think everyone was really afraid after 9/11 and we’re ready for someone to just take the reins and lead us to safety. And here was this person telling us he was going to do that, and so I kind of felt like, you know, like Emily said, what country are we in? What year is this? Why aren’t people questioning this person in charge? And so it’s just nice to see Americans back to being what I always thought Americans were. But I’d like to be in a room with the 30 percent.

Now, what are the odds that we’ll be seeing Ms. Maines on The O’Reilly Factor or any conservative-leaning television or radio program any time soon?