Ed. Note: My take is here. — JN
Who can forget the way Natalie Maines singlehandedly damned her little country trio – the Dixie Chicks – to infamy by bashing President George W. Bush in March 2003? She was on tour in Europe criticizing our president while he was in D.C. sending troops to liberate Iraq. Country music fans rightly viewed Maines’ criticism as a move more befitting someone like Bill Clinton, who also protested American wars while on foreign soil (the Vietnam War), and the Dixie Chicks quickly disappeared from radio airwaves.
Here’s Maines’ quote:
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.
For the record: I’ve been critical of Maines’ attack on Bush ever since and plan to continue being critical of it. Because the bottom line is this: The American people — the salt-of-the-earth, work-hard-everyday-to-make-ends-meet, sign-up-to-fight-in-the-military people — don’t like to see someone standing with Europeans and hurling criticism at our President on the eve of war. They rightly equate that with criticizing the mission before it begins.
But this is not to say that the American people don’t support the freedom to criticize a president at the right time and in the right way, even overseas. And as a matter of fact, I’m betting that 99.9% of those same salt-of-the-earth folks who were outraged by Maines’ criticism of Bush are giving a standing ovation to Peter Fonda for calling President Obama a “[bleeping] traitor.” (The other .1% will have a problem with the “[bleeping]” part.) Furthermore, I can imagine people throughout flyover country giving each other high fives as they read Fonda’s words.
Why did Fonda say this? Because he’s still outraged over the way Obama chose to use BP personnel for cleanup after the Gulf Oil Spill instead of allowing our own Coast Guard to get in there and get it done. Fonda described the BP personnel as “a bunch of Brits,” then added:
“I thought we kicked them out a long time ago. They tried to get back in 1812, but they didn’t make it.”
Give Fonda credit for knowing his history. We did kick the Brits out via the American Revolution and they did try to get back in during the War of 1812, only to be bested by us once more.
Perhaps someone, somewhere will still hold it against Fonda for saying what he said on foreign soil — he’s at the film festival in Cannes — but I’m not that someone. Instead, I’m just going make sure you heard me right the first time when I told you that Fonda called Obama a “[bleeping] traitor.”
All I can say to the Easy Rider after that assessment is, “thank you.”
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