>>whilst being totally offended by the Dixie Chick's comment.<<
I wasn't offended by their comments, frankly I was shocked.
I was a HUGE chicks fan. Hell, I was even a member of their fan club (got you first dibs on concert tickets and such). I even went to see them after they made their dumbass comments. I haven't listened to them since, nor did I buy their latest album.
What they did more than anything else was insult and alienate their fans. Most of us decided we didn't want to support artists who didn't support us. So now the chicks are history. To damn bad. They asked for it.
As for Ted, as I said before, he's taken shit form those people for years. For people on the left to act all holier than thou after what they've said about Republicans (see sirs list) is just another example of the hypocrisy of the left.
At the 49th Grammy Awards Show in 2007, the Chicks, as they are informally known, won all five categories for which they were nominated, including the coveted Song, Record, and Album of the Year, in a vote Maines interprets as partly a statement for free speech.[3]
Despite minimal airplay, Taking the Long Way debuted at number one on both the U.S. pop albums chart and the U.S. country albums chart, selling 526,000 copies in the first week (the year's second-best such total for any country act) and making it a gold record within its first week. The Chicks became the first female group in chart history to have three albums debut at #1.[28]
In Europe, both singles from their Taking the Long Way were well received by country radio, remaining on the European Country Charts for more than 20 weeks each: Not Ready To Make Nice peaked at #13 and Everybody Knows at #11.[29]
The group's Accidents & Accusations Tour began in July 2006. Ticket sales were strong in Canada and in some Northeastern markets, but notably weak in other areas. A number of shows were cancelled or relocated to smaller venues due to poor sales, and in Houston, Texas, tickets never even went on sale when local radio stations refused to accept advertising for the event.[30] In August, a re-routed tour schedule was announced with a greater emphasis on Canadian dates, where Taking the Long Way had gone five-times-platinum. The tour's shows themselves generally refrained from any explicit verbal political comments, letting the music, especially the central performance of Not Ready to Make Nice, speak for itself. At a Nov. 5, 2006 concert in Calgary, Alberta the Chicks received a thunderous ovation when the song was over, and the band held up a handwritten sign from a fan that read "Nobody likes a nasty Bush."
During 2006, the Dixie Chicks became the first major band to hire a designated blogger to be embedded with them for their promotional activities and tour. They partnered with Microsoft and hired Junichi Semitsu, a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, to write first-hand accounts for their Accidents & Accusations Tour at the website
http://dixiechicks.msn.com.[31] MSN broadcasted an entire live concert, called "Scene of the Crime", of the Dixie Chicks' return to Shepherds Bush, England, the site of "The Incident". Toward the end of the concert Natalie said from the stage, "Everyone has been asking me what I'm going to say and well, I guess it can't hurt to repeat myself. I'm ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas," which was met with thunderous applause and cheers.
In 2006, Taking the Long Way was the ninth best-selling album in the United States. It won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Album, Best Record, and Best Song (for "Not Ready To Make Nice") - 14 years since one artist or group last swept those three awards[32] - and Best Country Album on February 11, 2007. After their Grammy win the Dixie Chicks album Taking the Long Way hit #8 on Billboard 200 and #1 on the country album charts and the song of the year winning Not Ready to Make Nice re-entered the charts at #4 on the Hot 100.
The music video for "Not Ready to Make Nice" was nominated for the 2007 CMT Music Video Awards in the categories of "Video of the Year" and "Group Video of the Year," however, the video did not win in its nominated categories.[33]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks#Continued_success_with_a_.22non-commercial.22_sound
