What I learned from the dixie chicks

In class as well as in the Lull reading on Hegemony I was able to go back and retain the knowledge I had previously covered on Antonio Gramsci. Hegemony as Gramsci coined it, was a culture phenomenon as well as sometimes animated reality of the consent and coercion of a mass culture through the infrastructure of those in charge. what I am getting at here is that hegemony defined as the ideas and principles of the people in charge which are understood by the masses who are not relative to such cultural norms. one example of this that we got from class was the way in which American holidays like july 4th are celebrated blindly without question as  to some of the darker sides of our freedom and history. To question this would be to say, whose independence, because not all americans were given independence until the abolition of slavery.

A more vivid and relative example of this would be the american culture of a post-9/11 United States. After 9/11, the FCC (federal communications commission) was one organization that had cracked down on the radio broadcasting of a certain country band called the dixie chicks. By no means is this band a protest band by nature, but more a group of woman from Texas who play pop-country music. They were very popular up until the the time the U.S had entered the Iraq war. On stage at a concert they had criticized president Bush and stated that they were embarresed that Bash was a fellow Texan, due to his foreign attacks on Iraq and afghnistan. What followed was an immediate plummate of  record sales due to their claims.

Since the U.S at the time was on red alert in the wake of terrorism, the people of the U.S had very high approval ratings for the war on terror, even if it wasn't directly attacking the al-queda. Since Bush, at the time, had substantial approval ratings, the band's remarks caused the people of the U.S to protest them of off the broadcasting air and left the band hopeless until their comeback album which arrived around the time of the publics criticism of George Bush.

While this is a very brief example, the point I am trying to make is that, while the people of the U.S were being lied to of the lack of knowledge behind the wars being fought, the masses allowed for beliefs of the people in charge to shadow over them.