Protest songs don't play in land of country music

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Protest songs don't play in land of country music


By Charles M. Madigan
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 23, 2003

NASHVILLE -- Here in the emotional middle of America, where heartbreaks and dreams are distilled then put to rhyme and music, it was no surprise that Billy Dean opened his set before the Kenny Rogers concert with a call for everyone to stand and sing "God Bless America."

Hundreds of people in the Ryman Auditorium, the revered first home of the Grand Ole Opry, stood up and joined in. It would have been unthinkable to remain seated in the old pews that fill the place. Dean sang in a clear baritone, waited a second for the echo to die down and said, "Remember the troops."

That drew a cheer.

If you want to find out why support for President Bush and the American war in Iraq is so strong in Nashville, a conservative city where patriotism and country music have always marched hand in hand, and elsewhere in the country, you need ask only one question: "How do you feel about the war?"

The response among supporters is clear. They believe the president is doing the right thing, that the nation owes full backing to its troops and that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who must be forced from office.

The Gallup Organization polled 602 Americans 24 hours after the war began and found three-quarters of them approved of Bush's decision to attack Iraq, with 60 percent strongly approving the assault. In addition, 83 percent said they felt confident about the war and 60 percent said they were proud of the U.S. action.

A spike in public support whenever the nation heads off to war is traditional in America. It was strongly evident in the first Persian Gulf war for then-President George Bush. Support was also strong when an American-led coalition attacked Serbian forces in Kosovo, Yugoslavia.

Ken and Charlotte Garretson traveled the 80 miles from their farm in Five Points, Tenn., for a break from livestock handling, with the stop at the Ryman on Thursday night the highlight of the visit. Charlotte Garretson, who manages an office for a construction company, was eager to talk. Her husband was quiet, pensive.

"He is our president, and they are our children, and I can't imagine anyone not supporting them," she said.

"I came past an anti-war demonstration on the way over, and I almost got into trouble. I was shouting `George Bush! George Bush!' It just makes me so angry that people are protesting when our troops are going into a war.

"I don't want anyone to be hurt, but Saddam Hussein is a bad man. He killed his own people. What would happen if there were chemical or biological attacks here on our children? Then it would be, `Why didn't you do something about this?'" she said.

Polls find war support

That is a common sentiment here in Nashville and, polling results indicate, a common sentiment across the nation. Even though there have been determined anti-war demonstrations in America's biggest cities and smaller ones such as Nashville, the Bush message has obviously reached its intended target on the home front and has been well-received.

Still, larger protests against the war were scheduled for the weekend, in places such as Chicago and New York, and in campus towns such as Madison, Wis., and Boulder, Colo.

Support for the president sometimes emerges in unusual ways and also taps another more troubling aspect of American character, a gut reaction that chastises any dissent and makes even talk against the war risky. There is a heated skirmish in the country music world now, where the formerly beloved Dixie Chicks are at the center of a controversy about what you can say about the president and where you can say it.

The battle started March 10 in London, where the Dixie Chicks, easily the most successful girl bluegrass/country group in modern times, were playing to a sold-out house. Singer Natalie Maines picked that moment to open her large but engaging mouth.

She put her whole leg in.

"Just so you know," she told the British audience, "we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

It took no time at all for the comment to spirit its way back home, where the response was immediate and striking. The Texas-spawned Chicks were banned from many country music stations around the nation. A vast, Internet-enabled debate exploded among country music fans.

Deejays urged listeners to cut up their Dixie Chicks CDs and send them to Sony Music Corp. They set up Dixie Chicks garbage disposal cans and held rallies at which Dixie Chick albums were smashed by tractors. The Chicks, who were hot, hot, hot until Maines' comment, lost lots of fans over a few words.

"I will no longer spend one red cent on Dixie Chicks merchandise, whether it be CDs or concert tickets," wrote Texan Kim Roper "a former Chicks fan" in a bitter e-mail posted on CountryReview.com. "Nor will I leave the radio on when a Chicks song is played, just as I will turn the channel if I see them on TV."

There were many more messages in the same tone.

A tender nerve

Dave Kelly, the program director at Nashville's WKDF radio, said he has never seen anything like the reaction in his 11 years of country programming. The station received some 3,000 e-mails on the first day of the flap and had to install an extra telephone line just to take complaints.

"Country music has always been the music of America," he said. "It's a good way to take the national temperature. It's a very tender spot right now. Even the free-speech people say she shouldn't have said that in England. That was just a slap in the face of America. I have never seen anything like the reaction before."

Maines has since apologized to President Bush and proclaimed her support for the troops.

All of this happened before the war even began and has continued, unabated, even as the armor rolled into the Iraqi desert and rockets and bombs fell on Baghdad. It came at about the same time that another country music legend, Charlie Daniels, issued a manifesto on his Web site in defense of the president. Daniels made it clear he believed America's real enemies were in Hollywood and attacked them for the way they talked about the war.

"OK, lets just say for a moment you bunch of pampered, overpaid, unrealistic children had your way and the U.S.A. didn't go into Iraq," Daniels wrote. "Let's say you really get your way, and we destroy all our nuclear weapons and stick daisies in our gun barrels and sit around with some white wine and cheese and pat ourselves on the back, so proud of what we've done for world peace."

The e-mail gets a lot stronger after that, not surprising given the source. Daniels, a big star and deep insider in the country music family, added the bonus track "This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag" on his Charlie Daniels Band Live album.

"Charlie is Charlie," Kelly said.

"If he has something to say, then he is going to say it. If you don't want to hear it, don't ask."

That letter drew a huge response from his fans and meshed handily with the emerging furor over the Dixie Chicks comment. Some Daniels admirers, W. David Ayers of Atlanta among them, were moved to poetry.

Poem disparages Hollywood

"They drink their Perrier and French champagne

"I guess those coward products wrecked their brain

"Because devoted Americans understand

"It takes more than words to protect our land.

"As I close I would like to say, God Bless Charlie Daniels,

"God bless the U.S.A."

Down at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, a must-stop for all the bus tours, the woman who sells CDs in the shop offered an engaging smile when she was asked about the Dixie Chicks/Charlie Daniels flap by a customer who had bought an album from each.

"People certainly do talk about it," she said.

Then she paused and with the wisdom of a sales clerk who has seen albums continue to sell despite controversy in the music world over the years, said it will all blow over with time.

"Everything does."

Bob Stegner, 71, and his partner, Suzie McFall, 70, were resting at the museum and waiting for their bus to leave as they talked about their reaction to the war.

"I'm certainly glad that we finally made the decision," said McFall, a retired math professor at Indiana University. "We are doing this for our children, for our grandchildren and for our great-grandchildren. Saddam Hussein is a crude and awful person."

Stegner, who loves travel, said he is so angry at the lack of French support for the war he will never again visit Paris, which was a favored destination.

"Saddam Hussein needed to be dealt with, and if we didn't do it now, we would be sorry later," said Stegner, a retired engineer and chief operating officer for an Indianapolis gas utility.

"I think we are doing the right thing."