O'Reilly casts his mind back...oh, those were the days

With the Alito hearings still going on, gross-out king Bill O'Reilly apparently is coming over all nostalgic about early 2003, just before the war started. He's picking on the Dixie Chicks again, claiming they "have not recovered to this day" from lead singer Natalie Maines' controversial comment.

Of course, that was a lie. Here's the thing, though, and it's something we should remember. "Dixie Chicked" has become a verb meaning to suffer a negative impact on your career as retribution for making an unpopular political statement.

As you'll recall something very similar happened to Bill Maher, and IIRC Madonna pulled a video so it wouldn't happen to her. If it was having a chilling effect on people with the kind of money and power behind her that Madonna has, what do you think it did to younger, less-secure entertainers?

Which I'm convinced was the reason behind Clear Channel pulling the Chicks from radio playlists; they wanted a head (or three) on a pike that they could point to and say "See? This is what you get!"

But what we should remember is that it didn't work.

As Media Matters tells us,

In March 2003, group member Natalie Maines incited controversy after telling a London audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Initial anger over the statements and a limited radio boycott did reportedly have an impact on the group's album sales. However, the Dixie Chicks' 2003 North American tour proved that any backlash was short-lived. In May, a mere two months after the controversy first erupted, the tour opened in Greenville, South Carolina, to a sold-out crowd. The tour then spent the summer crisscrossing North America and grossed $61 million, making the Dixie Chicks tour the top-grossing country tour of 2003. By the end of the year, their album, Home, ranked fourth on 2003's Billboard Top 200 Album chart, with the group itself finishing the year as the top-selling country group/duo and the third-highest-selling pop group/duo.

The trio's music has also consistently won major awards. Since the anti-Bush comments, it won the Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group Grammy in 2005. The group's song "I Hope," whose proceeds will go to victims of Hurricane Katrina, has been nominated in that category and in the Best Country Song category for the 2006 Grammys, which will be awarded February 8.

In other words...please, please, Dixie Chick me. I can stand not recovering from having top-five sellers and winning major awards. Media Matters doesn't get into this but I'd imagine the group also gained a lot of new listeners from the controversy, people like me who began paying special attention and found we truly enjoyed the music.

But seriously: I hope this information is out there where younger artists can see it. The first, greatest example in recent years of how dissent can harm your career, and it isn't true. It's not real.

You'll recollect Bill Maher is doing pretty okay these days too.