The Dixie Chicks: hot new gay icons?

It seems like 2006 will be the year the Dixie Chicks are going to officially become Hot New Gay Icons (like Kathy Griffin had become last year). Lots of reviews of their new album Taking The Long Way in the gay press. A good deal of coverage on gay blogs recently as well. Gay bars like the Edge in Boston and Woody's in Philadelphia are holding record release parties for the album. They also contributed "I Believe In Love" to the compilation album Love Rocks, which benefits the Human Rights Campaign Fund. This type of outreach and promotion hasn't been done with their previous albums before. I don't how much of this is decided by the Chicks themselves or by their record company Sony.

I can see the Dixie Chicks going over well in the gay community. The majority of gay people are pissed off at Bush for dissing gay marriage (pardon the expression) left and right. Gay people are often persecuted, attacked and abandoned for who they are--even by friends and family--so they identify with the Dixies's struggles and clashes in the past three years, resulting from lead singer Natalie Maines (who's from Texas herself) saying onstage in London that "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." (As a result they lost of lot of airplay from country radio stations, received death threats, had their records burned in public and were ripped a new asshole by rival country artists like Toby Keith.) From Bette Davis and Judy Garland on, gays--to the point of stereotype-- traditionally have identified with famous women's struggles, actresses and singers in particular. I wouldn't be surprised if the DCs do a cover story for the Advocate or Out magazine before the year is through.

Of course there will be a few Log Cabin-type gays like this loser who are so desperate to impress the straight boys in the Republican Party that they are all too willing to join in a witch-burning. A word to guys like them: George W. Bush doesn't like your gay ass and never will regardless how much you trash the Dixie Chicks or Hilary Clinton or whoever you target-du-jour is. Dissing Natalie is not giving to save your gay ass when the Republican moral nazis come for you.