April 11, 2003

The following is a transcript of an online web chat with Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines presented by Liberty.com Web Magazine.

The Dixie Chicks Online

    We at Liberty.com: A Web Magazine are proud to present a live online web chat with Natalie Maines, the lead singer of best-selling American country act the Dixie Chicks.  A firestorm of controversy enveloped the award winning band during its European tour in March when Maines onstage announced to the English audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."  The comments were viewed as critical of the United States' foreign policy as the war with Iraq loomed.  In response, many radio stations dropped the band from their play lists.  The American leg of their tour was abruptly canceled after the first few shows when the three girls in the band were shouted off the stage by protesters and pelted with hundreds of pounds of French fries.

    Liberty.com is proud to present, online, Natalie Maines.

LIBERTY:  Natalie, are you with us?

NATALIE MAINES:  I'm here online, and I would like to thank Liberty.com for the opportunity to chat with you and set the record straight.

LIB:  That's great!  We here at Liberty.com have been very impressed by the powerful response to your comments onstage in Europe.

N.M.:  Well, we were overwhelmed when we got back to America.  Everything was crazy.  The whole thing was just a big misunderstanding.  I love my country, and I am proud to be an American.

LIB:  We here really respect your openness.  It takes a true patriot to stand up on a stage and denounce the extremist policies of the President of the United States.

N.M.:  I never denounced the President!  It was just a silly bit of stage banter!

LIB:  But what banter!  Of course, the Bill O'Reillys and Rush Limbaughs were quick to brand you and your bandmates as traitors.  All over America people are burning your records, boycotting your concerts, and I hear  that in Tulsa, Oklahoma angry former fans are actually lining up in Wal-Marts to buy extra copies of your CDs to they can burn them at Pro-War Anti-Dixie Chicks rallies in fundamentalist church parking lots.  Up and coming country singer Tessie Dirtlove has even released a number one hit single in response called "They're Ain't No Chickens in Dixie."

N.M.:  It seems like the whole world has gone crazy.  People are just going nuts over a stupid, little screw up.

LIB:  Perhaps all the excitement is because your words touched a nerve for so many Americans.  During a recent web chat on Liberty.com with Martin Sheen, the actor and activist said - I'm quoting here -  "I applaud the Dixie Chicks with all my heart for their bold indictment of President Bush.  It is refreshing to hear righteous, young voices of dissent rising from the Heartland.  These young women deserve our thanks for committing professional suicide to embrace our Left Wing Liberal agenda.  Frankly, I've never heard any of their music, but I plan on buying one of their records real soon." Your thoughts, Natalie?

N.M.:  That's crazy talk.  We're just small town country girls from Texas.  I didn't mean nothing by it.  I was just shooting off my mouth.  We're just like you:  small-minded, resentful of smart people, and cruel and distrustful to anyone different from us.

LIB:  Yet already the the simple heartfelt sincerity of your comments has made a huge impact around the world.  Your new album "Home" is now the best selling album in France and Germany.  Publicly disgracing President Bush  was a bold, provocative gambit!

N.M.:  I was drunk!  Okay, I admit it! I was knee-walking, shit-faced drunk at the time.

LIB: Still, "in vino veritas."  Recently CNN showed live footage from Syria of hundreds of heavily armed Muslim extremists gathered at a rally in Damascus, wearing Dixie Chicks T-shirts, firing their AK-47s in the air, and chanting "Death to Bush!  Death to America!"  You must be very proud.  We here at Liberty.com are.

N.M.:  This is a nightmare.  I thought Liberty.com was some kind of patriotic web site.

LIB:  We are patriotic!  Liberty.com is the official web magazine of the American Communist Laborers Party, and our readers applaud you and your band's ideological purity.  Now let's open up the web chat to our readers.

REDSTAR:  Hi, Natalie!  I am a huge fan, and I am the Secretary General of the American Militant Student Socialist Party.  I just wanted to tell you that all my comrades and fellow radical students love you and your music.  We have made "Wide Open Spaces" our unofficial fight song.  All  over America every time we stage a protest rally on campus to denounce the government we always play the Dixie Chicks full blast at the end when we burn the American flag!

N.M.:  I'm drunk right now.  Emily and her dad and our mangers all told me I needed to go into detox and clean up, but I wouldn't listen.

BUTCHGYRL:  Hey, Natalie!  I am a big fan, and I love your music and your "in your face" left wing political stance.  Most radical liberals are folks like that blowhard Michael Moore or Alec Baldwin.  They're outsiders and Hollywood Liberals that most folks would never listen to, but you and the Dixie Chicks are just as country and inbred and ignorant as the people we're trying to reach.  We love you!  I am a member of the Gay/Lesbian Militant Attack Force and Abortion Advocacy Commune.  I want you to know that we've put your picture on every flyer we post all over America to promote our causes from mandatory Gay Boy Scouts to the legalization of marijuana and amphetamines.  You rule!  Keep preaching, Sister!  And by the way, my life partner Kyra thinks you're hot  :) !!!!!!

N.M.:  Stop it!  Stop it!  Stop it!

BUDMAN23:  Hey, Natalie.  I'm an appliance repairman in Lawrence, Kansas and I wanted to tell you that today I burned three of your CDs.

LIB:  Why did you feel obliged to destroy their music BUDMAN23?  Is this your form of political protest?

BUDMAN23:  No.  My wife plays those Dixie Chicks albums all the time, and I just can't stand that fiddle and banjo crap.  It just seemed like an opportune time to steal the discs off her dresser and burn them.

LIB:  So your decision was not an ideological reaction?

BUDMAN23:  No, it was based strictly on aesthetics.  Those albums suck.  Of course, now my wife is listening to that horrible new Shania Twain disc all the time instead.  It's awful, too.  Do you know if Shania has pulled any bone-headed anti-American stunts lately, too?

N.M.:  No No NO NO NO a;lkdtjpqo4857u295-jsojiu[jw-j-ww905jj0s0-93752jhtpayugwp94th;kdfngpis8yglsdutpwu60360354u05uy0jgjg;sgj

LIB:  It looks like we have lost Natalie, but be sure to join us next week when French Prime Minister Jacque Chirac and Fidel Castro join us for a live online web chat.