"No More Whistlin' Dixie"

The title suggests the end of the musical careers of the Dixie Chicks. But "whistling Dixie" is also slang for dreaming about unrealistic things. In his online article, Jim Lewis criticizes a news colleague's treatment of an incident involving the trio. This is seen in the subtitle: "Diane Sawyer's Indecorous Performance with the Dixie Chicks."

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 12 Unit 4's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: How the Media Twists the News, Why Partisans View, Bush's Address on Iraq Invasion, The Dixie Chicks, Keep the Heat, Chicks Reap Whirlwind, No More Whistlin' Dixie, America Catches Up, Speaking Up and Speaking Out, Esteemed Outlaws, A Tired Old Song
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. innocuous
    not injurious to physical or mental health
    the occasion for the show was a relatively innocuous remark the Chicks' lead singer, Natalie Maines, made at a concert in London just before the war.
  2. gruesome
    shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
    When Sawyer prompted the three of them to ask for forgiveness, in a gruesome moment of utterly fake primetime piety, the trio paused.
  3. conviction
    an unshakable belief in something without need for proof
    You could see them struggling with their pride, their conviction, and their desire to get along.
  4. crass
    so unrefined as to be offensive or insensitive
    She spent an hour trying to bend the Chicks with a combination of false sympathy and crass sensationalism.
  5. pillage
    the act of stealing valuable things from a place
    Time and again, she cut back to a typeset insert of Maines' original remark, as if Maines had called for the pillage of Crawford.
  6. affirm
    declare solemnly and formally as true
    In the tradition of a Stalinist show trial, the women were forced to affirm their patriotism and their support for the troops.
  7. crude
    conspicuously and tastelessly indecent
    At every point Sawyer tried to force them into a crude, Manichean choice.
  8. clarify
    make clear and comprehensible
    Later, when Maines was trying to apologize and clarify, Sawyer said, "I hear something not quite, what, wholehearted..."
  9. guise
    an artful or simulated semblance
    Well, I heard something not quite--what--honorable in Sawyer's presentation of the affair: an attempt to take a trivial matter that had blown up into an absurd controversy, and blow it up even more under the guise of simply covering the story.
  10. abase
    cause to feel shame
    Essentially, she asked the women to choose between abasing themselves on national television or stirring up more hatred against themselves.
Created on Sat Mar 07 15:24:28 EST 2015 (updated Sat Mar 07 19:07:34 EST 2015)

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