Last week Larry Gross wrote in his Living Out Loud column about The Dixie Chicks (“Not Ready to Make Nice,” issue of June 14-20), “Apparently, I don’t know much about Country music and its audience here. They seem not to support freedom of speech.” Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from the consequences of that speech.
I don’t see where lead singer Natalie Maines’ freedom of speech — or freedom of anything else — is in jeopardy. I believe she’s seeking a demographic that doesn’t exist — i.e. anti-war (and now anti-patriot) Country music fans, and the recent sales of The Dixie Chicks’ concert tickets reflect that.
I doubt that even Los Angeles and New York City Country music fans are predominantly anti-war, even if the mainstream (and the not-nearly-so-mainstream) media would like to represent the country as such and lead us into another Vietnam-style retreat. After our withdrawal there, many Vietnamese citizens paid with their lives for our failure to stay the course. The truth is now coming out 30 years later, as North Vietnamese records show what a benefit the Jane Fonda school of thought proved to be for the Communist cause.
If we bail out this time, the Vietnamese won’t be the ones paying the price. It will result in a less stable Middle East, a lost opportunity to establish a democracy in Iraq, Al-Qaeda having one less front in their war (declared long before George W. Bush was president) and further proof that when the s*** (sic) gets deep the Americans will take a hike.
I am confident that attempting to democratize Iraq and making Al-Qaeda come to us in Iraq rather than waiting for them to come here again will be shown in coming years to have been the correct strategy.
This country votes with its feet and with its wallets every day, a move Gross alludes to toward the end of his column: “It’s time to make nice with the Chicks, and if that can’t happen with Country radio I’ll take my ears elsewhere.”
So you can abandon Country radio if you disagree with their opinions, but fans abandoning The Dixie Chicks because they disagree is anti-freedom of speech? Hmmmm.
— Dick Buchholz, Covington
City Is Far Behind on Green Ideas
Someone called me this evening to tell me of Margo Pierce’s recent article on green roofs (“Raising the Roof,” issue of June 14-20). After hearing the caller’s information, I replied that I guess they’re correct when they say that it does take 20 years for Cincinnati to respond to what’s happening in the world.
Actually, it’s more like a half century or more. Naturally, green roofs are commonplace in Germany. In fact, a green roof seminar planned for last year at the Drake Hospital complex had to be cancelled for lack of interest.
Pierce might have scratched the surface, but I would have liked to hear how our backward city government has done nothing to promote this technology. A few years ago I inquired if I could get my stormwater charges reduced or eliminated if I put up a green roof. I could have been from Mars, because they never heard of green roofs.
When one considers that green roofs can absorb 95 percent of stormwater runoff, I would think that Cincinnati Water Works or another city department would know about green roofs. But I submit that they’re more interested in the revenue they steal from property owners than they are in ecology or finding a solution to the stormwater problem.
While Over-the-Rhine does indeed present opportunities to use the technology, the infamous Cincinnati building department will present hurdles that will make any innovative effort not worth the additional costs. After all, don’t forget where you live.
— Dieter Schmied, Cincinnati
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2006.
