Obama and Springsteen: the Barry / Bruce bromance

 

Democrats, [Please] Break Up With Bruce Springsteen - POLITICO

"And while you’re at it, stop relying on pop culture to score points with voters."

..."Recent years have seen a growing penchant among online liberals for reworking the materials of pop culture into the shallowest sort of political commentary. Anyone who’s been on liberal-leaning corners of the internet over the past five years has seen Hillary Clinton imagined as Daenerys Targaryen, Donald Trump as Lord Voldemort, and Joe Biden as Captain America, to name just a few examples. Reworking pop-cultural figures into mascots for certain political values certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, but social media has made it a considerably more prevalent and embarrassing one.

"These sorts of political expressions are an inevitable result of a time when most of pop culture is thought to belong to Democrats.". . . 

. . . "As someone who writes about music for a living and is both a Springsteen agnostic and a reliable (if at times reluctant) Democratic voter, I’m fascinated by the party’s longstanding love affair with the Boss. And it’s often been reciprocal: Springsteen has endorsed every Democratic presidential candidate since 2004 and has been affiliated with liberal politics for far longer, going at least as far back as his storied repudiations of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. At this point Springsteen and the liberal establishment’s mutual affinity feels completely intuitive, although it also feels like an early, analog model for an entanglement of political thinking and popular culture that has come to pollute Democratic politics in the 21st century."...

The Tunnel Wall: What Bruce Springsteen Has Said About Joe Biden on 9/21/20

I like his stuff, have always liked it, but now the bloom is long off the rose, knowing he would dislike me, and seeing so many unlikeable celebrities who adore him. One feels the urge to ask him if he thought Obama was vindictive when O shut down the government, fenced off open-air memorials and their viewpoints, then told his park service to "make it hurt". The Tunnel Dweller;                                     "Though his disdain for Donald Trump is well-known, Springsteen has revealed he supports Joe Biden and believes his election will help repair America's global reputation.                     "Speaking about this year's RNC, Springsteen said it was "just seeded with constant lies and total distortion of the American idea."