Posted on 10/17/2006 6:31:54 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee
Radio talk show host and bestselling author Laura Ingraham shot back publicly Monday at an Oprah Winfrey show producer who invited her to make pre-recorded comments on videotape regarding the Dixie Chicks on the popular daytime talk show.
Ingraham is the author of the 2003 New York Times bestseller Shut Up & Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America, which has just come out in paperback. The title of Ingraham's book is aimed primarily at the we're-not-country-anymore country trio the Dixie Chicks, who are among the bestselling female groups of all time. However, the Chicks lost broad support across the nation and a sizeable chunk of its audience among country music fans in 2003 after singer Natalie Maines made a disparaging remark about President George W. Bush in a London concert. Maines made her comment just prior to the beginning of the Iraq War.
A subsequent boycott of the Chicks' 2003 CD Home and the removal of their songs from country music radio playlists nationwide caused a sharp drop in the trio's sales. Their latest CD, Taking the Long Way, has sold more than one million units, but that is far below the performance of their previous releases.
To wit: The Dixie Chicks’ breakthrough album, 1998's Wide Open Spaces, was released in January 1998. It was seven months before Spaces went platinum (i.e., was certified as having sold one million units by the Recording Industry Association of America), but had sold four million by January 1999. Thusfar, Wide Open Spaces has sold twelve million in all.
The Chicks’next album, Fly, was released in August 1999, and sold two million units within a week of its release. One year later, Fly had gone sextuple platinum on its way to over ten million total.
The trio's next, Home – the recording the Chicks were supporting when Maines made her remark – had gone triple platinum two-and-a-half months after its August 2002 release, and would go sextuple platinum a week after that March 2003 London concert. That's when the backlash began and the Chicks' momentum screeched to a halt. Home has not been certified as having sold more than one million since. And Top of the World Tour: Live, a November 2003 compilation of performances recorded on the 2002-03 tour, has not been certified platinum almost three years later.
The politically-charged PR buildup to the May 2006 release of Taking the Long Way included the cover of Time magazine, the front page of USA Today the weekend before its availability in stores, a series of performances and interviews on ABC's Good Morning America, and a profile on CBS News' 60 Minutes. A recurring theme of the interviews was their disconnect with and self-imposed separation from the country music industry and its audience, and more than once references were made to those offended by Maines as "rednecks" that weren't a significant part of their fan base, as they saw it. Perhaps others saw things differently: Although the Long Way CD debuted on the Billboard album charts at #1, it has not been yet certified double platinum nearly five months after its release. On top of that, the Chicks’ tour supporting Long Way has had fourteen dates cancelled due to poor ticket sales, even in heartland venues such as Houston, Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Knoxville.
The Chicks had a documentary film crew follow them on the 2003 world tour recording the events of the aftermath of Maines’ remark, and the resulting film, Shut Up & Sing (appropriating, without permission, the title of Ingraham’s book right down to the ampersand) will be released to limited theaters in the United States October 27th. In yet another PR blitz, the Dixie Chicks are going to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show in support of the film. Apparently, Ingraham will be spoken of as a target of wrath by the Dixie Chicks, which is probably why she was asked to give comments to be used in the Oprah show. But the author of the film’s title was not invited to make an appearance on the program along with the Chicks. On Ingraham's program Monday, she played a voice mail message left by a man identifying himself as an Oprah producer:
"Hi Laura, my name is [deleted] with the Oprah Winfrey show, and I am working on a show about the Dixie Chicks. And I would like [you] to check your schedule to see if you were possibly available to do something on tape for us to roll in as part of that show..."
Could Laura Ingraham -- the queen of political talk radio, with over five million listeners nationwide every morning -- turn down an invitation from Oprah Winfrey, the queen of television, with at least twice that many daily viewers? This is what she told her audience about when she would be taped for Oprah under those conditions: "[When] cows fly!" She continued: "I am not going to be in any taped piece about the Dixie Chicks so [Oprah's editors] can cut and splice and do what they do on shows that are more oriented toward a liberal viewpoint. If you want to put me on Oprah Winfrey's show live to talk about a certain issue, I will consider it. You didn't have me on when Shut Up & Sing came out, but now you want me on in a taped piece? Uh...lemme see, lemme check my calendar -- how does NEVER sound to you?"
The latest example is last week's outrageous Oprah program with New York Times columnist and BDS sufferer Frank Rich. She transformed a discussion of his hot-selling Blame Bush book The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina into a larger discussion about "Truth in America," expanding on Rich's opinion that the general public is too dumb and/or distracted to demand truth from a lazy corporate news media.
Correction: Neither Laura Ingraham nor any staffer of her program wrote this post. I did.
Good for Laura! Smarter than Oprah on every level.
Ping...
If Oprah gains any more weight, we can start calling her "Orka" again...
LOL!
Everyone knows that Oprah made her first million doing Jerry Springer type shows. Somewhere along the line she decided to be a little more legitimate and respectful.
I don't understand why conservatives ever go on these shows.
Here here. My wife, who is as conservative as I, will watch Orfa sometimes and I can never understand why. I feel as though I need to shower after watching more than two or three minutes of the show.
Rules people... Rules.
I know my mom(conservative) will watch it "sometimes" also.. not often.. kinda weird, probably because at that time you dont really have much other choices(not much else on) unless you like game show reruns or something :)
Nobody pays any attition to the rules anymore!
I do. Give me a few minutes :)...
Anything that is taped ahead of time is subject to editing and context realignment.
Much better!
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