Dixie Opportunism
Kevin McCullough
Friday, March 21, 2003
There is a new low in crass attempts to gain popular good will and it has been spewing forth in record volume in recent days. Last week a sitting U.S. senator, a former U.S. president and a country music icon all used shameless opportunities to garner the favor of those they were in front of.
What has happened to dignity, intelligence and patriotism? What has happened to common sense? What has happened to the idea that when America faces great crisis we don't show our home-based squabbles abroad?
Apparently we've lost them all.
Last week ex-President Clinton, in speaking to a crowd at a YMCA in Manhattan, took the opportunity to say, "Look, this war is gonna be over with quick, and you can always wait a day to kill someone ... but you know you can't wait a day to bring them back."
Besides showing complete rhetorical ignorance as a former head of state, surely even Mr. Clinton knows that we have no guarantees of anything we will find when the War on Terror liberates Iraq.
How can he be so sure it will be a quick finish? It is my hope that he is right – but it is truly irresponsible for a person of his former status to embark on such campaign-like shtick to get some applause.
Not far behind him was the man who many say is the leading front-runner for the Democrats’ presidential hopes, Sen. John Kerry, calling the efforts of the U.S. in recent days "some of the worst diplomatic efforts in the history of the U.S."
In observing Secretary Colin Powell appear on the normal round of Sunday morning shows, I see an administration official who is going in to the venues – answering the hard questions about everything from his travel habits to the exact number of phone calls he has made before 5 a.m.
Sen. Kerry is forgetting a key item in this whole process as well. He is behaving in a highly hypocritical way considering he voted in favor of the congressional houses giving President Bush all the authority he needs and more to go and liberate Iraq.
Sen. Kerry must be particularly vexed because France was not willing to support our efforts and thus derailed the entire attempt at diplomacy. But Sen. Kerry does not acknowledge, not in his address to the California Democrats anyway, that the French have abstained or been against every single resolution ever offered in the U.N. Security Council that has ever been brought forward.
Sen. Kerry does not raise the issue of sweetheart deals that France has enjoyed with Iraq and its dictatorial regime. Sen. Kerry plays both sides of the fence and is losing credibility every time he switches sides on this issue. But again the mantra is "Whatever it takes to get applause to the people I'm in front of now!"
Finally, last week a very foolish little singer from Texas went on stage in London and publicly pronounced her shame for our current president. In a later non-apology apology Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks did her best to say that she worries about the women and children who will be hurt.
Right. Women and Children. Like the 10,000 Saddam has had killed every year since 1979. The ignorance of her comments raised the ire of her fans – and for good reason.
You can be unpatriotic and survive in the world of Rock and Roll, or Alternative, or Rap, or just about any other genre of music in existence. But when our sons and daughters are on the front lines, ready to do a task that none of them wishes to but realizes that they must in this post-9/11 world, you cannot diss them or our nation in the world of Country.
It's your right to speak out, but the moment you do it on foreign soil, for foreign applause, simply because you are too illiterate or too unsophisticated to know that you don't air your dirty laundry on your neighbor's front porch after ringing the doorbell and summoning them to observe, you lose your right to be titled a patriotic American.
Of course after a period of time has gone by, when we have liberated the people who have been so oppressed and when democracy begins to take shape in a part of the world most thought would never see it, these Dixie Opportunists will be shown for what they are. Their selfishness, ambition or little-girl insecurity will relegate them to the same status as that of the U.N. Security Council – completely useless.
And as a small symbol of this, I'm asking you to send me your entire collection of Dixie Chicks memorabilia. I will have my radio show producers collect it and store it, and a few days from now we are going to light up the biggest Dixie Chick bonfire ever seen. Pictures will be taken of it and sent to Ms. Maines.
And in the process we will continue to pray for our men and women in harm’s way, for having the courage to do that which this former U.S. president, sitting U.S. senator and former country music icon have yet to do.
What's that?
Protect the future of my children and yours in the post-9/11 world that has already been visited upon us!
Send to:
Kevin McCullough
WYLL Radio
P.O. Box 56500
Chicago Illinois 60656
Kevin McCullough is enjoyed weekdays 3-5 p.m. on AM 1160 WYLL, a 50,000-watt station in Chicago, Ill. (http://www.wyll.com/nafternoonaudio.asp) Kevin may be reached at kmc@wyll.com. |
