Wow. Talk about not being ready to back down. There’s a new documentary coming out (limited release today, national release on November 10) called Shut Up and Sing, which shows what happened to the Dixie Chicks after the famous “we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas” statement at a concert in England. The film looks back in retrospect at Both the Iraq War and the experiences of the band as it happened, providing for some interesting reminders of how people felt back then versus how people feel now.

One scene in the trailer in particular stands out, as the Dixie Chicks get lectured by a man who tells them, “Try not to be judgmental of the President. I’ll tell you why: he’s got sky-high approval. The war couldn’t be going better.”

One can imagine that this was at the very start of the Iraq War, probably late March or early April 2003, when American forces were on a roll into Iraq (the “ashamed” comment was made on March 12, eight days before the opening of the war). It was probably before the looting started after the fall of Baghdad. At that point in time, one might have thought things were going great–if one didn’t think ahead to the future too much. But to hear, now, someone say what that guy said then, comes as a jolt–as probably a lot of things in this documentary will be.

The contrast between the heady pro-Bush, gung-ho Iraq invasion days and the present Iraq disaster with Bush in the doghouse shouldn’t be too surprising–after all, we all lived through them. But the past three years, in terms of how people feel, has seen such a huge shift that it may shock people to remember how different things were so recently.

But not everything has changed too much. Via DKos and Think Progress, a story from Variety that NBC is refusing to air ads for the documentary. Why? Because “they are disparaging of President Bush.”

Let’s hear that again: NBC is refusing to air an ad because it is disparaging of President Bush.

Update: Sean makes an excellent point in the comments below: NBC runs the show Saturday Night Live, which regularly includes sketches that are, to say the least, “disparaging” of the president. This more than a little knocks down the network’s excuse for not running the ad. It also marks the fact that their real reasons are not on the up-and-up, otherwise why lie about them?

You can see the ad on Think Progress, or the whole trailer on the film’s MySpace site.

Yet more damning evidence that the media is radically liberal!