LydiaL

What’s The First Line That Comes To Mind? 👀🤔

I remember well the public feud between The Chicks and Toby Keith, and I feel like many conservatives are willfully misremembering it. The Chicks were blacklisted by much of the industry for their opinions on George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq (which turned out to be 100% right, by the way). And Toby Keith directly contributed to that pile-on. Now, look, you can dislike how Natalie Maines went about offering her opinions, but nothing she did was anymore inappropriate than what Toby Keith did. But country conservatives loved Mr. Keith's jingoistic propaganda and already disliked The Chicks for their progressive opinions even before Iraq. A fair fight between the two would have meant both get to say what's on their mind and then, afterward, everyone gets back to the music. That's what should happen in an industry that supposedly loves freedom of speech and freedom of ideology. But that's not what happened. Much of the country music industry sought to push The Chicks completely out for their opinions, and Toby Keith went right along with it. Many conservatives whine about "cancel culture" these days and do this incessant handwringing over free speech, but two decades ago, The Chicks became arguably the most prominent victim of "cancel culture" for expressing a reasonable opinion about our government's illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. It was an enormously embarrassing moment for the country music industry, and The Chicks never got the apology they deserved from the many cowardly men who did the exact opposite of supporting free speech. Every time I hear some performative conservative whine about so-called "cancel culture," I think back to when they worked overtime to destroy The Chicks for expressing a reasonable opinion.

Don’t think about it. Don’t try to be cool. Tell me; what was your favorite book when you were twelve? Off the top of my head:

I don’t know who Ms. Rachel is but that baby’s looking at him like “count your days….” 💀