Editorial: Making a clean sweep

Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

If the Grammy Awards could be used as an apology, then the annual music event went on bended knee before the Dixie Chicks on Sunday, bestowing upon the trio all five of the awards for which they were nominated.

It was a stark departure from 2003, when the country music establishment and fans rebuffed the Texas-based group after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush during a concert that occurred just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

At the time, Bush's job-approval rating hovered around 64 percent. The Dixie Chicks received death threats. Country music stations refused to play their songs. The trio's music sales nose-dived, and the group canceled concerts because of plummeting ticket sales.

But Sunday night - as Bush's job-approval rating stood at 32 percent - the Dixie Chicks received standing ovations and five of the music industry's top accolades, including record and song of the year. "That's interesting," Maines said upon taking the awards podium Sunday.

Indeed. If nothing else, the Dixie Chicks deserve an award for sticking it out in a business that shunned the free speech rights of its own. Such freedom has always come with consequences. One only has to recall Linda Ronstadt's 2004 concert at the Aladdin, when fans stormed out and demanded their money back after the singer voiced support for Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."

But it would seem that the Dixie Chicks' First Amendment rights would have been defended by country radio DJs, whose livelihoods rely on speech freedoms, and by the music industry in general, which defends the rights of rap artists to promote songs with lyrics that openly glorify cop-killing, drug use and the abuse of women.

Maybe the music industry has decided that Bush's sinking popularity now makes it OK - cool, even - to question the president's policies. Thankfully, artists such as Maines know that it has always been OK - right, even - to do so.