The Eagles rocker Don Henley is amazed he has been allowed to openly insult and criticize President George W. Bush, while other musicians have been vilified.

Rock fans turned on The Eagles' country contemporaries The Dixie Chicks when they said they were ashamed to hail from Bush's home state of Texas - yet Henley has compared the president to a chimpanzee and suffered no consequences.

He tells TheBoot.com, "Where other people might not be able to get away with it - like our friends the Dixie Chicks, bless their hearts - we get away with it. I've said some outrageous things about Bush in the press. Every time I do an interview and they ask me who I would like for President this time I say, 'Any of the front-runners would be fine with me, because frankly a f---ing chimpanzee would be an improvement.' I've said that numerous times in the press and nothing has come of it."

And he claims it's a "mystery" the typically right-wing country community has tolerated his band's pro-left song lyrics, adding, "The fact that we can go play the Country Music Awards and get a standing ovation when we've just put out an album with songs like 'Long Road Out of Eden' and 'Frail Grasp on the Big Picture' on it, which talks about politics and religion in a very what one might call leftist sort of way, is really sort of a mystery to me.

"But we get away with it. I don't know if people just ignore that part of it because they love the old stuff so much - maybe we've just made such a deep inroad into their hearts and minds that they forgive us when we do something that offends them."

(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)