EDITORIAL – Ad controversy mirrors movie

At a London concert in 2003, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines uttered a phrase that… At a London concert in 2003, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines uttered a phrase that has significantly impacted her life and her band in the subsequent years.

“We’re ashamed that President Bush is from Texas,” Maines said.

Considering the president’s current popularity, it’s really not that shocking of a statement, and the group has found themselves in the news again, three years later, because of it.

In 2003, the Dixie Chicks were not part of the American consensus on Bush and the war. Reluctantly, Maines and the band caved to pressure and apologized for their comments, but their apologies had little influence.

Country stations blacklisted the mega-popular group. The ladies watched their multi-platinum selling CDs being destroyed in the street by protesters who called them traitors, sluts and Saddam-lovers. The group received numerous death threats and was forced to tighten security at many of its appearances. At one time, the Dixie Chicks couldn’t perform enough live concerts to meet ticket demands. Now they’re canceling U.S. dates and adding stops in Canada and abroad.

It’s taken the country a little while to catch up, but now the Chicks – who are still out of favor with the conservative country music market – are now part of the consensus. That’s where their new movie, “Shut Up and Sing,” comes in.

Since Maines’ 2003 comment, a film crew has followed the group and filmed the fallout and the road to recording and touring again. The documentary “Shut Up and Sing” is currently in limited release but will open in a wider release Nov. 10.

And, like any movie being released in theaters, the studio distributing the film, Weinstein Co., is shopping around for airtime to broadcast an advertisement for the film.

While local TV stations representing all major U.S. broadcast networks have picked up the ad, NBC has refused, according to the Associated Press.

The policy of the network’s standards and practices department is not to air ads dealing with controversial material. NBC also issued a statement that said the ads were unacceptable because “they are disparaging to President Bush,” according to Reuters.

The ad shows clips from the documentary of protesters, the Iraq war, President Bush and the Dixie Chicks reacting to Maines’ comments over the past few years.

“It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America,” Weinstein Co. co-owner Harvey Weinstein said.

NBC said that although they were shown the commercial, they were not asked by the distributors if they could purchase airtime, according to the Associated Press. NBC also mentioned that if Weinstein Co. wanted to work with the network to make the advertisement more acceptable, it would be possible to air a commercial for “Shut Up and Sing.”

It’s sad that even in a climate of political uneasiness where many Americans have lost faith in their president, censoring still occurs to protect the president from ridicule and the network from controversy.

While it is NBC’s policy to play it safe with controversial ad content, it’s a shame that the Dixie Chicks are being headed off yet again because of their message. If anything, the publicity of this incident will only enhance the controversial feel of the movie and entice audiences to check it out when it hits theaters. Maybe that was the plan all along.

Perhaps the larger issue is whether or not we’re giving the media the message that we’re only comfortable when they play it safe and take the middle ground. If that’s the case, we need to send the message that we’re not afraid to have a dialogue about what’s going on in our country, even if we might not all agree.

When it comes down to it, it’s the networks prerogative to sell advertisements. We’re just disappointed that Americans are sending the message that it’s not OK to talk about the controversial issues plaguing our country today.