Sacremento Bee writer Anita Creamer sticks a down-with-Fox-News aside into her yay-for-the-Dixie-Chicks column...why? No logical reason, or premise, for that matter:

Country music fans were particularly outraged that [Dixie Chicks singer] Maines made her comments in London, not in the United States, but you get the sense that they'd have been upset no matter what.

Because people itching to go ballistic will find an issue. Period.

Maines provided a convenient target allowing them to vent their anger over circumstances beyond ordinary Americans' control. As a result, they treated her like the enemy, stoked by conservative commentators and country music stations.

Raw emotions churned. The masses proved easily provoked. Not very evolved of them, really.

Hysteria is so unattractive.

In general, when the likes of Fox News tries to steer your sympathies in one direction, you'd be wise to aim for the opposite. It's likely they're trying to distract you from the real issues at hand.

Still, it's an interesting phenomenon, this need to shun formerly admired celebrities who dare to make the occasional statement that's out of sync with fans' own opinions.

Some of us remember (from the dim recesses of our childhoods, mind you) a young John Lennon causing all sorts of self-righteous uproar at the height of Beatlemania in 1964 when he wryly opined that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus...

When an unashamedly-biased, half-wit, total-unknown columnist like Anita Creamer uses her applause of a highly-politicized musical group to encourage you to boycott a news organization that stringently avoids taking political sides, you'd be wise to ignore her and make up your own mind. It's likely she's trying to distract you from the real issue at hand--that she doesn't like Fox News, but has no legitimate criticisms to offer.

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