The Naturalized Redneck: Performing
Citizenship Through Patriotic Submission
When Natalie Maines spoke into her microphone in the spring of 2003, the
crowd at London’s Shepherds Bush Theatre responded with cheers. Said
Maines: “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want
this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the president of the United
States is from Texas” (“Shut up and Sing”). The result—perhaps inevitable in
the build-up to the Iraq War and its concurrent patriotic swell—struck Maines’s
group, the Dixie Chicks, from the top of the country music charts, drove them
from the good graces of country music fans across the United States, and
lingered for years in the form of reduced attendance and weaker album sales.
Opponents were incensed that Maines—and by extension, the full trio of the
Dixie Chicks—would openly criticize a wartime president and saw the comment
as nearly an act of treason, particularly since the words were uttered abroad to
an audience who likely needed little encouragement to disagree with the policies
of George W. Bush.
Within the domina