Wednesday, August 11, 2004
The marginalization of Bruce Springsteen
However, it is also fair to observe that Springsteen's recent overt partisanship may have diminished his capacity to effect the political result that he desires. George Miller nails it:
Bruce Springsteen has agreed to front a series of anti-Bush concerts sponsored by Moveon.org.
"I've got 25 years of credibility built up, and this isn't something I've moved into lightly," Springsteen says. It’s good to know that Bruce at least understands what he is risking by identifying himself so closely with the Bush-haters....
Had Bruce continued to ignore this particular artistic cul-de-sac, he might have had more time to work on his handsome collection of grown-up musical commentary on the American experience. He might have come up with something as blistering as Born in the USA, to describe his current unease at the United States’ domestic and foreign policy. (Though the fact that he can’t, and no one else can either, says something about how the anti-Bush crowds’ hysteria fails to resonate, culturally, and how disconnected much of the artistic elite is from popular opinion.)
If Bruce had stuck to the wise path of declining to put his art to direct use in a political campaign, he might have been able to influence, through his music, both the Bush-respecters and the Bush-haters. As it is, he has joined the noisy, irresponsible, thoughtless, and culturally asinine Bush-haters whose political discourse rarely rises above paranoid accusations and infantile name calling. He has marginalised himself, culturally, in the American culture war.
Well said.
CWCID: Bill Hobbs.
3 Comments:
By 
Another Person, at
Wed Aug 11, 06:58:00 PM:
Are you ever reminded of the similarity of anti-Bush tirades and evangelism? Often they take the same strident tone, the same moral indignation and the same sense of impending doom to work their respective audiences into a frenzy.
As much as artists like to comment on their free speech rights, they frequently mistake their fame as a soapbox on which to wax lyrical on things political [couldn't resist]. They charge their critics with censorship, but don't recognize that they are paid to sing or dance or parrot lines -- not polarize their fanbase.
The similarities between religious evangelism and rockstar political involvement is similar in another way, too: become one of us or one of them, the hated.
Is that really what singers and dancers want? A sectarian division in American life that pervades even the most innocent activities?
By TigerHawk, at
Wed Aug 11, 07:33:00 PM:
Interesting point, not least because both evangelists and rock stars would be deeply distressed by the analogy.
By Bill Faith, at
Wed Aug 11, 11:08:00 PM:
I just included a link to this post in an update to my post at
http://inbillsworld.blogspot.com/2004/08/buy-this-patriotic-americans-records.html.
Thank you for blogrolling me, btw. I'm not sure how I earned it, but I appreciate it and I'll try to be worthy. I've been reading your blog a lot
longer than I've had one of my own.
