My Homies

by digby

Paul Krugman’s column today lists the names and statements of people who were right about Iraq. He says, “We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage.” Indeed we should.

The recording industry is doing just that by honoring the Dixie Chicks with five grammy nominations today:

THE DIXIE CHICKS are now officially an L.A. band.

The trio started in Texas and soared to fame in Nashville but, after their well-documented odyssey through partisan politics, they were frozen out of the country music establishment, which denied them radio airplay and awards. The Grammys stepped in Thursday to embrace the genre refugees in dramatic fashion, giving them five nominations, including for album, record and song of the year for the music of “Taking the Long Way,” a CD recorded in Los Angeles with rock musicians and a rock sensibility.

[…]

The Chicks, of course, have been in the center of one of pop’s strangest soap operas. On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, lead singer Natalie Maines was on stage in England and made an off-the-cuff remark that would rival John Lennon’s 1966 quote about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus” as a cultural flashpoint. Maines told the crowd: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

The Chicks became the target of CD burnings, radio bans and peer criticism that changed the course of their career and even led to this year’s acclaimed documentary film, “Shut Up & Sing.” Maines and her partners, sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, responded this year with an album that, musically, is their least beholden to traditional country or bluegrass.

The group has a long history of Grammy attention — it has five trophies already and this is its third nomination for best album — but this year the accolades stand in stark contrast to the Country Music Assn. awards in November, which ignored the Chicks despite the album’s sales, which now stand at 1.7 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The Dixie Chicks took the slings and arrows that were meant for all of us who were speaking out against Bush in that dark time four years ago when he was considered by many people in this country to be more of a religious figure than a politician. It was an ugly period and the Chicks were a profile in courage for refusing to back down. In fact they got their backs up when people started writing them death threats for daring to speak their minds and stood even taller. That’s patriotism.

Good for the grammys for embracing them. And as a resident of Los Angeles, I couldn’t be more proud to call them an LA band.

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