Before we know it, we've been hauled off to have our bags searched and we miss our connecting flight to Memphis, where the Chicks are playing the following night. Welcome to America. Paranoid much?

Yet for all of that, other than immediately after the storm in March, there seems to have been little lasting effect on the Chicks' sales or ability to draw live - every single one of their shows on this tour has been sold out. Other than the deranged, I don't think anyone gives a damn anymore.

Interestingly, after an initial apology for the statement, the Chicks have become more defiant over time:

As Trotsky once observed, the proletariat is radicalised by experience of the struggle. And while many have abused and reviled the Chicks, to others they have become a cause célèbre.

Bruce Spingsteen was one of the first to post a message of support on his website. Dolly Parton has also told her fans they should carry on buying Dixie Chicks records. More significantly, political support has grown since early July, when the group's English-born manager, Simon Renshaw, testified before a congressional committee looking into the future of the radio industry.

He revealed that his office had received death threats, and offered evidence that right-wing organisations had orchestrated the campaign. He complained that the group's rights under the first amendment had been abused, and that "artistic freedom, cultural enlightenment and political discourse" had been undermined.

Many agreed. One committee member, Barbara Boxer, a Democratic senator from California, likened the corporate radio ban to Nazi Germany and the McCarthyite witch-hunts of the 1950s and called it "a chilling message to people that they ought to shut up".

....Their anger at Bush is now expressed in far stronger and more coherent terms than the original off-the-cuff comment. "We were told the official White House quote on our ordeal," Maines recalls. "I thought it was going to be something empowering about the first amendment and our rights as American citizens. I don't know why I thought such an educated thing could have come out of there. Instead it was, 'Their fans have spoken.'"

"Which makes your mind go back to the death threats and the trashing of Emily's ranch and the corporate banning," says Maguire. "So is the President condoning those things?" Robison demands.

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