Dixie Chicks, freedom of speech, and an ethic of defiance

Mary Chapin Carpenter’s most recent CD, The Calling, is one of the CD’s I’m listening to while doing the exercise bike thing. Sorry – but I’m a fair weather runner. Never been the slightest bit interested in padding through puddles, exhibiting pink legs turning blotchy red in the cold, and pretending that at my age I’m a serious contender for anything athletically ambitious. Just want to keep fit, burn stress, and enjoy the occasional guilt free chunk of chocolate!

Anyway, this CD is one of the better reflective collections to come out of the more progressive strains of country music I’ve listened to. Her tribute to the Dixie Chicks, ‘On with the song’, is a scathing comment on power hungry administrations, ridicule of those dehumanising dismissals of people who are ‘other’, and dripping scorn on those who use power to silence dissent and pretend that has something to do with the very democracy they go to war to defend.

This song throbs with the kind of anger that simply refuses to grant the power brokers the last word. There’s high moral value in some forms of defiance, especially when they are a refusal to risk collaboration by silence, by resignation or by fear.

This isn’t for the ones who blindly follow
Jingoistic bumper stickers telling you
To love it or leave it, and you’d better love Jesus
And get out of the way of the red, white and blue

This isn’t for the ones who buy their six packs
At the 7-Eleven where the clerk makes change
Whose accent makes clear he sure ain’t from here
They call him a camel jockey instead of his name

Chorus:
No this is for the ones who stand their ground
When the lines in the sand get deeper
When the whole world seems to be upside down
And the shots being taken get cheaper

This isn’t for the ones who would gladly swallow
Everything their leader would have them know
Bowing and kissing, while the truth goes missing
Bring it on he crows, putting on his big show

This isn’t for the man who can’t count the bodies
Can’t comfort the families, can’t say when he’s wrong
Claiming I’m the decider, like some sort of messiah
While another day passes and a hundred souls gone

Chorus

This is for the ones that I see above me
Three little stars in a great big sky
Light for the world and hope for the weary
They try

This isn’t for the ones with their radio signal
Calling for bonfires and boycotts they rave
Exhorting their listeners to spit on the sinners
While counting the bucks of advertising they’ll save

This isn’t for you and you know who you are
So do what you want ‘cuz I know that you can
But I’ve got to be true to myself and to you
So on with the song, I don’t give a damn

There’s now a book, When Art and Celebrity Collide. Telling the Dixie Chicks to Shut up and Sing, which examines the dominant male patriot mentality which seeks to silence artistic conscience and coerce them into compliance by seeking to ruin them economically. Chapin Carpenter’s song of support for  the ‘three little stars in a great big sky’, who dared to publicly disagree with Presidential policy, is itself an important negation of political bullying in the name of freedom.

I don’t pretend to know the best ways to tackle some of the threats to global peace we all now face – but I am sure that security isn’t secured by silencing conscience and rubbishing truth.

A couple of other tracks on this album are worth some further thought – I’ll maybe get to them in some later post.