Country radio received a wake-up call, and it chose to just roll over and hit the snooze button—again.

      The Dixie Chicks were awarded the music industry's highest honor, the Grammy, an incredible five times, including the prestigious record and song of the year (for their controversial "Not Ready to Make Nice") and album (Taking the Long Way Home) of the year.

      It was the first time a country CD won album of the year since 2002 when the movie soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou received the statue.

      It would have seemed an occasion for a country music industry-wide celebration, an occasion to triumph the fact that country was being embraced by the mainstream.

      It seemed a gift-wrapped opportunity to have the genre make more inroads among a wider, general audience, not an insignificant few of whom probably still associate the genre with the 1950s (and earlier) twang.

      So, how did country radio honor and take advantage of this remarkable achievement? By continuing not to play the Dixie Chicks because they had the audacity to do what real artists are supposed to do: question their leaders and established mores and help everyone look at issues from many different perspectives.

      "Most country stations aren't playing the Chicks, and they aren't going to start now," one country station owner told the Associated Press. Amazingly, the trio was not even nominated for the CMA Awards!

      The AP reported that country broadcasters said that the group's Grammys show how out of touch the Recording Academy is from the average country fan.

      Hello?!

      What it shows is just how out of touch some in country radio and on Music Row are with the realities of 2007. It is an embarrassment to the industry and to the genre and to those country fans who know that active debate has to be encouraged, and that disagreeing with our leaders does not make someone less of a "patriot."

      As Allison Moorer told us in our last interview with her, "Artists have to ask the questions. I do think that in some circles, Music Row being one of them, you're not allowed to ask questions about God and/or religion. If you do, then you might offend someone. It's the same thing with country. If you question something [some in the right wing] do, then you're un-American or unpatriotic. That's b.s."

      And it's no longer acceptable—if, indeed, it ever was.

      Country needs more, not fewer, artists with the fortitude of the Dixie Chicks.

      Musicians and others who protested the Vietnam War kept the focus on the futility of that misguided national effort and helped avoid the loss of even more lives. Weren't 58,000-plus dead soldiers, almost a stadium full, enough?

      Many of us who were in that strange land of Vietnam, and many of those who weren't, still struggle with the probability that, in terms of national mission, we wasted our time there; we wasted our lives there.

      How do you tell someone about those you served with who are still hurting, still fighting Vietnam? "Still in Saigon"? Charlie Daniels got it right.

      How sad it is that, in the current climate, it seems that some creative people, musicians and others, don't feel they have the freedom to speak out to try to avoid another Vietnam.

      The conservative element in country music needs to get its collective heads out of its bottom (line) and do the right thing.

      Lives very literally are at stake.

Rex Rutkoski is a veteran national music, entertainment and features writer who also has a biography-writing service for unsigned, new and established musicians in all genres. He can be reached at rrjr@peoplepc.com.