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I don’t think television has country down right yet. They’ve had me on variety shows, but there’s always some guy from Los Angeles or New York running around behind those sunglasses telling us just where to stand. What you see on television is a bunch of poor old country boys and girls hunching up their shoulders and looking like they wished they were never born. Now that’s not country. I say, let us out there with our own bands, not those television bands with their saxophones and clarinets, If you just put me in front of that camera, I’d say, “Let ’er rip, Flip!” And we’d give ’em a good show. But television’s not ready for us yet to be ourselves.

I’m still unhappy because we didn’t get a national television show. They had me and George Lindsey—Goober—on the “Orange Blossom Special USA” on Thursday, November 15, 1973, right after “The Waltons.” They were going to see if I could be the first female country singer to have her own national show.

I’ve always said that if you want to be a success, you have to be yourself. Sure, you need writers, but you’ve got to take what they give you and turn it into you. I do my own shows, where I ain’t afraid of saying what I think. But when I get on television, they’re always passing those cards at you with those big words. Yes, I admit I have trouble reading those big words, but when I did that show, I was just myself. We just didn’t get enough rating points to get the show. But you can’t argue with them. I figure it will come up again some time.

After I did the benefit for Hyden, I got a letter from the then President Nixon. I thought that was nice of him. I thought about writing back to him to ask him why they put Kelly in jail. I meant Lt. William Calley, the guy they convicted in the massacres of My-Lai. I thought his name was Kelly. I don’t know too much about it but it seemed strange they should pin everything on one little lieutenant. Maybe he did wrong, but there were a lot of other people who should have known better, too. Either everybody who was guilty should be put in jail or nobody should be put in jail.

Anyway, before I got a chance to write, I got invited to Washington myself, for a dinner. I mean, not just me, but around a thousand people who worked for the United Way in the United States and Canada. They were honoring Mrs. Nixon for her work in the charity. I made a commercial that raised enough money to put up a new building, so I got invited. Well, I figured as long as I was going to be singing there, I might as well speak my piece. When I got on the stage I said: “Pat, I’ve been wanting to write a letter to tell Richard to let Kelly go. We brought Kelly home from Vietnam and put him in jail. Why don’t we stop picking on just that one little man or else let him go?”

I could tell that shook some people up. But I didn’t have time to think about it because I had to sing my song. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw it the next day on the front page of the Washington Post. They acted like I did something bad calling her husband Richard.

The next day we flew to Chicago for a show, and this television announcer met me at the airport. He asked me why I addressed the president of the United States as “Richard.” I said, “They called Jesus ‘Jesus,’ didn’t they?” That guy took one look at me and started running. I never learned his name or I might have called him by his first name, too.

It seems funny that anyone would mind what I was saying. That’s why I appreciate my fans; they accept me for being myself. The only bad publicity I’ve ever gotten was in my home state when some people said I should pay for paving the road up to Butcher Holler. But mostly I get good stories because I tell the truth. Whenever I get involved in anything, I get in touch with a columnist in Nashville named Red O’Donnell. I call him up and tell him exactly what it’s all about. I trust him to get the true facts out, whatever they are.

Since I struck out on my own, lots of different