The Dixie Chicks: Emily Robison, left, Natalie Maines, center, and Martie Maguire

Dallas, Texas (AP) -- Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, is finding out that sometimes saying you're sorry doesn't make much of a difference.

Radio stations nationwide are boycotting the Dixie Chicks, even though Maines publicly apologized for telling a London audience last Monday: "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Maines is a Lubbock native.

In her apology Friday, Maines said: "As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect."

The words didn't carry much weight with listeners in Maines' home state and elsewhere.

"We've had a huge listener reaction and movement against the statements," said Paul Williams of KPLX-FM in Dallas-Fort Worth, the nation's fifth largest radio market.

In Kansas City, Missouri, WDAF-AM set trash cans outside its offices for listeners to toss their Dixie Chicks CDs. Its Web site displayed more than 800 listener e-mails, most of them in support of the station's boycott.

After more than 250 listeners called Friday to complain about Maines' comments, WTDR-FM in Talladega, Alabama, dropped the Dixie Chicks.

"The emotion of the callers telling us about their fathers and sons and brothers who are overseas now and who fought in previous wars was very specific," said Jim Jacobs, president of Jacobs Broadcast Group, which includes WTDR.

The Dixie Chicks are in Europe promoting their recent release "Home," which won a Grammy last month for Best Country Album.

The group is scheduled to kick off the U.S. leg of its "Top of the World Tour" on May 1 in Greenville, South Carolina.

Dixie Chicks Explain Naked Magazine Cover

Country stars Dixie Chicks agreed to pose nude and covered in harsh words for the cover of an American magazine to show some fans how ridiculous they are being.

The trio have been vilified by some Americans after singer Natalie Maines criticized US President George W. Bush during a recent London show, and are even receiving death threats.

And now the girls have stripped off for the front cover of Entertainment Weekly, where they're plastered with words like 'Traitors,' and 'Dixie sluts.'

Fiddler Martie Maguire explains, "We wanted to show the absurdity of the extreme names people have been calling us. How do you look at the three of us and think, those are (ousted Iraqi leader) Saddam (Hussein)'s angels?"

Meanwhile, Maines burst into tears during an interview which aired on ABC's Primetime Thursday night, as Maguire confirmed the controversy wouldn't split the group up.

She said, "It all leaves a lot on our shoulders and a lot on her shoulders. They forget she's a human being. But we stand by each other through thin or thin."

Meanwhile, Emily Robison used the TV interview to talk about the group's death threats: "We have to have metal detectors at shows."

Copyright World Entertainment News Network 2003

Photo Copyright Getty Images

February 24, 2003

Ok let’s just say for a moment you bunch of pampered, overpaid, unrealistic children had your say and the U.S.A. didn’t go into Iraq.

Let’s say that you really get your way and we destroy all our nuclear weapons and stick daisies in our gun barrels and sit around with some white wine and cheese and pat ourselves on the back, so proud of what we’ve done for world peace.

Let’s say that we cut the military budget to just enough to keep the National Guard on hand to help out with floods and fires.

Let’s say that we close down our military bases all over the world and bring the troops home, increase our foreign aid and drop all the trade sanctions against everybody.

I suppose that in your fantasy world this would create a utopian world where everybody would live in peace. After all, the great monster, the United States of America, the cause of all the world’s trouble would have disbanded it’s horrible military and certainly all the other countries of the world would follow suit.

After all, they only arm themselves to defend their countries from the mean old U.S.A.

Why you bunch of pitiful, hypocritical, idiotic, spoiled mugwumps. get your head out of the sand and smell the Trade Towers burning. Do you think that a trip to Iraq by Sean Penn did anything but encourage a wanton murderer to think that the people of the U.S.A. didn’t have the nerve or the guts to fight him?

Barbra Streisand’s fanatical and hateful rantings about George Bush makes about as much sense as Michael Jackson hanging a baby over a railing.

You people need to get out of Hollywood once in a while and get out into the real world. You’d be surprised at the hostility you would find out here. Stop in at a truck stop and tell an overworked, long distance truck driver that you don’t think Saddam Hussein is doing anything wrong.

Tell a farmer with a couple of sons in the military that you think the United States has no right to defend itself.

Go down to Baxley, Georgia and hold an anti-war rally and see what the folks down there think about you.

You people are some of the most disgusting examples of a waste of protoplasm I’ve ever had the displeasure to hear about.

Sean Penn, you’re a traitor to the United States of America. You gave aid and comfort to the enemy. How many American lives will your little, ”fact finding trip“ to Iraq cost? You encouraged Saddam to think that we didn’t have the stomach for war.

You people protect one of the most evil men on the face of this earth and won’t lift a finger to save the life of an unborn baby. Freedom of choice you say?

Well I’m going to exercise some freedom of choice of my own. If I see any of your names on a marquee, I’m going to boycott the movie. I will completely stop going to movies if I have to. In most cases it certainly wouldn’t be much of a loss.

You scoff at our military whose boots you’re not even worthy to shine. They go to battle and risk their lives so ingrates like you can live in luxury.

The day of reckoning is coming when you will be faced with the undeniable truth that the war against Saddam Hussein is the war on terrorism.

America is in imminent danger. You’re either for her or against her. There is no middle ground.

I think we all know where you stand.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Copyright © 2003 Charlie Daniels
All rights under copyright reserved. Used by permission.