. . . "“He isn’t the voice of American pride. He’s a salesman, a disingenuous one at that. He fooled a nation into cheering its own condemnation.” That’s well put. And I was among the young fools, cluelessly cheering the condemnation and making this working-class liberal a rich man in the process.
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| Springsteen by Bruno Munier |
"It was July 1984, a very late weeknight. My buddy Mike and I closed up Perkins Restaurant in Butler, Pennsylvania, and left about 1 a.m. with a six-pack of Budweiser pounders for the old Kaufman’s department store in downtown Pittsburgh. There we joined a long line of fellow 1980s degenerates sleeping out all night on the sidewalk in quest of coveted Bruce Springsteen concert tickets.
"Perkins is a nice family restaurant chain. The restaurant where Mike and I worked — he as a junior manager and I as cook, dishwasher, and all-purpose grunt — flew a gigantic American flag on a high pole outside Clearview Mall. That flag always pleased patriotic Americans, of whom there were many in our hometown, including among classmates who had graduated from Butler High School the previous month.
"My friends and I weren’t political or ideological. We loved our country but knew little about politics. I couldn’t define a Republican or a Democrat. Like almost everyone in America, however, we liked Ronald Reagan. Even Walter Cronkite had marveled about Reagan, “I never thought I’d see anyone that well-liked …. Nobody hates Reagan. It’s amazing.” That was evident when Reagan was reelected with nearly 60 percent of the vote, 49 of 50 states, and winning the Electoral College 525 to 13.
"We patriotic teens also liked Bruce Springsteen. Already an established pop-rock star, he had just reexploded on the music scene with a smash album, Born in the U.S.A. The album cover and Bruce himself were bedecked in red, white, and blue. The stars and stripes were his theme. Old Glory was front and center for every performance during Springsteen’s enormously successful year-long-plus tour that hit major cities in America (Pittsburgh twice, both the Civic Arena and Three Rivers Stadium) and around the world.
"When Springsteen, during those shows, belted out the title track to the album, the crowd went nuts with patriotic fervor, furiously waving small and large flags. It was a great American moment.
"Or so it seemed.
"Unfortunately, young people in that era had been conditioned through years of indiscernible lyrics to not listen carefully to the actual words of the often-fatuous ditties to which they hummed and tapped their toes and played air guitar. In days when you didn’t have phones to Google lyrics, you often had no idea what the hell rocker X, Y, or Z was saying. And if the lyrics were sung clearly enough to understand, we morons didn’t really think much about them.
"And there were few starker examples of that than Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”
Mockery of the U.S.A.
"When one paused to actually listen to the words of this seemingly patriotic anthem — which capitalized big-time on the surge in patriotism of the Reagan 1980s — you realized that Bruce’s signature song was in reality a protest. Quite incredibly, given how it fooled everyone (our fault for being mindless dupes as much as Springsteen’s fault), the Boss’ famous track was a mockery of the American dream." . . .
