Still not ready to make nice

The Dixie Chicks were in town over the weekend for a concert. It was sold out.

 That was quite a change from a few years ago when the three Texas women were being excoriated, called every nasty name that some extremely nasty people could think of, as well as being threatened with rape, torture, and murder, all because they had committed the cardinal sin of speaking out against a president who was being revered by some as infallible. They famously told an audience where they were performing in London that they were embarrassed to be from the same state as that president. For that they were called traitors and much, much worse. They were boycotted by right-wingers, and radio stations that played country music refused to play their albums.

 Well, the Chicks persevered, as chicks have long done. They kept doing what they do, and in 2006 they came out with a new album, Taking the Long Way, that featured a song that pretty much summed up their feelings about the whole experience, "Not Ready to Make Nice."

Not Ready to Make Nice lyrics
Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I'm not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I'm still waiting
I'm through with doubt
There's nothing left for me to figure out
I've paid a price, and I'll keep paying
I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell, and I don't have time
To go 'round and 'round and 'round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should
I know you said
Can't you just get over it?
It turned my whole world around
And I kinda like it
I made my bed, and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets, and I don't mind saying
It's a sad, sad story
When a mother will teach her daughter
That she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world
Can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter
Saying that I better
Shut up and sing
Or my life will be over?
I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell, and I don't have time
To go 'round and 'round and 'round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should
I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell, and I don't have time
To go 'round and 'round and 'round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should, what it is you think I should
What it is you think I should
Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I'm not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I'm still waiting 

 The song won the Grammy award for "Song of the Year" which must have felt awfully good to the women who had suffered so much for exercising their freedom of speech.

 The real irony of this whole story for me is that many of those same people who did their best to make life miserable for the Dixie Chicks for their "insult" to a president who was pursuing an unnecessary war against a country that had done nothing to harm us and sending thousands of young Americans, not to mention countless Iraqis, to their deaths in the process, are the same people who have now spent the last eight years showing utter contempt and disrespect to the president who inherited that mess and has tried to clean it up. 

 The Dixie Chicks' weekend concert set featured a lot of their "greatest hits," a little Dylan, a little of this and a little of that. It was all well received by the sold-out crowd, but probably no song was better received than this which has sort of become their anthem.

Yeah, still not ready to make nice, not ready to back down. Why should they? They were right.

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