DIXIE-CHICKED

“Is the Hank Williams Jr. incident a parallel to the Dixie Chicks?” asks Radio-Info.com, an insider site for the radio industry. The question has clogged up its message boards ever since Mr. Williams publicly compared a golf match between President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner to a game pitting Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hubbub followed. The conservative country music star’s tune “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over” — used as the theme for “NFL Monday Night Football” since 1989 — was dropped by ESPN, and so was he. And the Dixie Chicks parallel? The Dallas-based country trio met with both adulation and criticism after singer Natalie Maines told a cheering London audience that she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas,” just 10 days before President George W. Bush ordered a military invasion of Iraq in 2003. The readers of Radio-info.com now wonder if Mr. Williams was “Dixie Chicked”; the singer himself says his First Amendment rights were violated by the network’s decision. The caterwaul has escalated into a discussion of political values, celebrity and civility. “I hope he continues to say what he feels, even if everyone doesn’t agree with him,” said one contributor, while another countered, “He did call Obama and Biden ‘the enemy.’ You don’t do that, even if you don’t happen to like the current occupier of the White House.” And still another pointed out: “George W. Bush has been compared to Hitler by a number of people, and it did not hurt their careers.” Link

Not mentioned is the fact that Hank Jr. was interviewed and specifically asked a political question, while Natalie Maines volunteered her comments during a concert outside the U.S.