Born in the U.S.A. is Patriotic, but not the way Slacker thinks.

I received a Slacker Radio email today, July 3^rd, promoting the 33 Greatest All-American Divas, Classic Springsteen, and 4^th of July radio stations.  I almost always just delete emails from Pandora, Slacker, Spotify, and the like, but anything that references my buddy Bruce, I’ve gotta read.

As a quick side note, I’m a big Springsteen fan.  I’ve seen him in concert more than a dozen times, and own all of his albums on CD and Vinyl.  The tagline “Classic Springsteen” means something I already own, and in multiple mediums.  Regardless, it drew me in, because I had a sneaking suspicion of the nature of the email.

I was proven absolutely right.  Bruce Springsteen is many things, including the finest songwriter of this or any generation, a showman extraordinaire, and one of the most intelligent people to enter the political discourse.  Of course, I say all of that because I’m a NPR-listening liberal.  Bruce Springsteen’s music runs the gamut from amazing and glorious to a bit preachy and pretentious.  Born in the USA is not my favorite Bruce album, but there is something about it that draws me in every time I hear it, especially given the current political and economic climate resonating with the lyrics of “My Hometown” and the title track.  When I opened the email and scrolled down, I was greeted with this image:

 

Other than sounding like idiots for posing a rhetorical question, and then answering it in such a douchy way, Slacker completely misses the point of the album. “Born in the U.S.A.” is a patriotic album in the same way that patriotism is defined as love for your country.  What you do may not support the current status of your country, but the desire to, as you see it, improve your country for everyone, is patriotic.  In the early 1980s, Bruce Springsteen sat down and recorded a haunting, empty, brooding song about a Vietnam Veteran who experienced to the horrors of war and came home to an ungrateful nation.  Basically the plot of “Born on the 4^th of July”’s Ron Kovic (who Bruce met by happenstance) without the traumatic spinal cord injury.

Other than the change from “send me off to a foreign land” to “send me off to Vietnam,” the lyrics are exactly the same, and if you weren’t listening before, you certainly know the true meaning of the song from the original, synthesizers and cymbals exploding like mortar shells, heard here.

After its’ release, Bruce’s song was automatically misinterpreted.  George Will went to a Bruce concert in the summer of 1984, and penned this essay, as tone-deaf as his bow-tie, slacks, and double-breasted blazer at a rock concert (his attire for the night, which he admitted in the article.) His takeaway from the concert was that, despite the tough economic times in our country, Bruce being able to sing about the unique quality that defines being born in the USA proves how great our country actually is.  It’s ipso facto logic, and it’s not wrong as a sentiment, but it is wrong in the context of Bruce’s song.  Conservative protectors of blind faith in the United States have caught up with the true meaning, like Glenn Beck here.

Will’s conservative bona fides gave his column gravitas for the 1984 election, and the re-election campaign of Ronald Reagan.  Reagan’s campaign requested to use the song for their re-election efforts.  Springsteen’s camp rebuffed them.  Still, Reagan name dropped Bruce at a campaign stop in New Jersey:

While he didn’t explicitly state that Born in the USA was the kind of song that carried the message about which he was speaking, I’m betting President Reagan didn’t have much in the way of Bruce albums laying around the Residence.  Upon hearing his name on the lips of the most powerful man in the world, Bruce responded by introducing “Johnny 99” thusly: "The President was mentioning my name the other day, and I kinda got to wondering what his favorite album musta been. I don't think it was the Nebraska album. I don't think he's been listening to this one." Bruce had always been reticent to speak about politics throughout the 1980s.  As we now know, he’s not so shy, supporting President Obama, and opposing the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush.

Bruce also is quoted on his Live 1975-1985 album, saying “Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.”  Therein lies the true nugget of Born in the U.S.A’s patriotism.  Our country was founded on the principles of freedom to express oneself, and the freedom from oppression for openly disagreeing with the government.  The original Tea Parties, and the Sons of Liberty all were disobedient, refusing to be blindly faithful to their government.  The ruling party, the conservatives or the liberals, tend to take up the mantle of patriotism and support for government, but there isn’t anything less patriotic or more subversive about sit-ins during the Bush Administration than there is about tea party protests during the Obama administration.  Both means of protest are patriotic, even if you disagree with their ends.  Failing to see those acts of peaceful, lawful protest as patriotic is a far more unpatriotic act.

Buried in an email about what to listen to on the 4^th of July as you celebrate the independence of your country, Born in the U.S.A is a great choice, so long as you understand that it’s not about the promise of America, but the desire to fight bland jingoism that preserves the status quo, rebranding a patriotic cheer of celebration about the luck of being born in the United States of America into a burden for action to make this country into the promise it provides.  So, no, Slacker.  Bouncing “Born in the U.S.A.” off your neighbor’s stucco carport as a way to say “America’s so great!” isn’t what the album is about.  Playing it as a call to action is where Born in the U.S.A.’s album’s true patriotism lies.