Tag: Texas

SHUT UP AND SING: CATCHING UP WITH THE DIXIE CHICKS AND WORRYING ABOUT THE ELECTION

Shut_up_and_sing_2Have you seen  this movie?  I sat in bed watching it early Sunday morning on cable and was just blown away.  It’s one of the saddest, scariest, most moving American documentaries I’ve seen in a long time.  That’s no surprise, since it was directed by  Barbara Kopple, who made Harlan County USA – the landmark documentary about coal mine union battles in Kentucky.

What happened to the Dixie Chicks is infuriating: performing in London just before the start of the Iraq war, lead singer Natalie Maines (married, by the way, to HEROES star Adrian Pasdar,) told the crowd "Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."  The scene is included in this preview.


As I watched the film, seeing the rage and cruelty that emerged in the response to this one sentence,  my first thought was, "Oh my God, what does this mean for Barack Obama?"  The people who went after the Dixie chicks were nowhere near a sense of respect for the First Amendment – and sounded like they would be particularly vulnerable to "elitist" or racist accusations against a candidate.  If you remember the exit polls in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania you’ll recall that many respondents just about acknowledged that they would not vote for Senator Obama simply because of his race.  Am I unfair to wonder if many of those people are the same ones booing and even threatening Maines’ life?  Still "out there" in larger numbers than we wish?  Look at these figures:

In Pennsylvania
exit polls on primary day, 14% of voters
said that race one one of several important factors. Fifty-five percent of those were Clinton
voters and 45% Obama voters. When asked
race was “important” 19% said yes – 59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if
race was a factor in their decision, 12% said yes. In this group, 76% were white Clinton voters.

In West
Virginia, when asked race was “important” to their decision, 22% said yes –82%
of them Clinton voters; when asked if race was a factor in their decision, 21%
said yes. In this group, 84% were white
Clinton voters.

Finally, Ohio. There, when asked race was “important” to
their decision, 20% said yes–  59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if race
was a factor in their decision, 14% said yes. In this group, 59% were Clinton voters. (the racial breakdown was not available here.)   

Please understand – I don’t know if I’m right.  I’m not alleging racial bias in all those who rose up to burn Dixie Chicks CDs and threaten country stations with boycotts if they "ever played one of their songs again"  – but I do suspect they could be more vulnerable to campaigns run in an uglier vein – just as they responded to this one.  It’s worrying me.

Continue reading SHUT UP AND SING: CATCHING UP WITH THE DIXIE CHICKS AND WORRYING ABOUT THE ELECTION

SO LONG GOVERNOR RICHARDS

When I worked at the TODAY SHOW as political producer I had a deal with both parties that they would call and give me a heads up when they named their keynote speakers.  That way I could call and book them to be on the show the morning of their speech — and get them before the other shows.  In 1988 I got a call on a Saturday morning to let me know that the Democrats had chosen Texas Governor Ann Richards.  I was frantic.  It was a weekend.  How would I find her?  How would I get her phone number?  I called the NBC affiliate in Austin.  They had no home number.  I called the AP.  Ditto.  I called a couple of political friends – no luck.  So then, on a lark (you can guess the end of this story I bet) I called information.  Yup.  She was listed in the phone book!  I called, she answered, and we got her first.  She was a riot on the phone, too.  I asked her about listing her number and she seemed genuinely amused- why shouldn’t she list her number like everyone else?  Governor Richards died yesterday, September 13, 2006 at 73.

Probably that speech was one of the high points of her career.  Funny and a bit mischievous, it pushed class angles to differentiate between the parties, and it’s remembered far beyond Michael Dukakis, the candidate who eventually lost to the first President Bush. Bush himself often seemed awkward.  Said Richards, “Poor George, he can’t help it — he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”  She brought down the house.

But President Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis, lost resoundingly. Richards was elected governor in 1991 (12th of the only 28 women ever to serve at governors) and served one term – losing her bid for re-election, ironically – to the son of the man she had so mocked –  George W. Bush.    In her later years she worked for a lobbying firm that included several tobacco accounts, to the dismay of many of her fans.

But this self-made country girl, recovering alcoholic ( and biker – see this photo) led her state with imagination and humor, wrote a wonderful autobiography that made the Depression come alive and set a great example for the emerging crew of women politicians.  Those who followed her gained much from her pioneering leadership – and we’ll miss her.