By Matt Rooney
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Bruce Springsteen was threatening to leave the country if his guy lost the election looooong before he wanted you to unite with him by buying a shitty jeep, folks. Of course, the ancient rocker’s unhinged hatred of 50% of the electorate didn’t stop at Trump! Nope. Mr. Working Class Hero has a long history of talking out both sides of his mouth on the topic of average Americans, and not all-too-long ago he took aim at the very Republicans hailing from the red states he talks about in his nauseatingly obnoxious Super Bowl ad.
“When you see the Democratic side of the House filled with brown people and black people, straight people and gay people, and then you look at the Republicans, who appear unchanged by history at this moment? They look ridiculous. And despite their current power, they look like a failing party,” Springsteen told The Atlantic back in June.
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So once again, as if you haven’t heard it before, a rich elitist liberal (Bruce) thinks you’re a racist “unchanged by history” because you’re not on his side of the aisle.
I’ll skip to the punchline:
Bruce doesn’t really care about unity. Never did, never will. He wants you to buy his tracks, sure, but he still doesn’t like you no matter how many you purchase. See above. What he really wants (second only to putting more money in the pockets of his age inappropriate skinny jeans) is for you to quit opposing the Left’s agenda and fall in line. Does anyone think for a moment Bruce would be urging people to come together if Donald Trump was in term #2? Please.
Likewise, I doubt we’ll be hearing any weepy ballads from the E Street Band about the Keystone Pipeline workers who are newly unemployed thanks to Joe Biden… but I digress.
Unfortunately for “the Boss” and Jeep’s woke PR team, the ad isn’t achieving its desired effect. The Right hates it. The Left hates it even more because the thought of Bruce Springsteen urging them to unite with evil racist Republicans against a bucolic, religious (!) backdrop is unconscionable to them.
What would’ve been a better strategy? Assuming unity was actually the goal?
Shutting the f*** up for a change and respecting the people who made him a gazillionaire. Entertaining Americans instead of indicting them, lecturing them or generally depressing the hell out of them.
Entertainers and athletes enjoy First Amendment rights just like everyone else. They also traditionally played an invaluable function in our democratic system by giving citizens an opportunity to unplug, blow off steam and escape during times of war, struggle, and political tumult. No longer. The NFL kneeling phenomenon wasn’t the beginning of the trend but I think it was the beginning of the endgame.
“American democracy was healthier when politics at the ballpark was limited to fans booing politicians who threw out the first ball—almost as a bipartisan obligation,” the Wall Street Journal‘s ed board lamented in late 2017 in an appropriately titled article ‘The Politicization of Everything.’ “This showed a healthy skepticism toward the political class. But now the players want to be politicians and use their fame to lecture other Americans, the parsons of the press corps want to make them moral spokesmen, and the President wants to run against the players.”
Now we have a new president and the Super Bowl viewing experience is dominated by politics. Preachy ads. A Biden COVID-19 lecture. Twitter hysteria over a lack of social distancing in and around the stadium.
It isn’t healthy, Save Jerseyans. It’s not. Elites like Bruce could hand out free jeeps and it could’ve reverse the damage they’ve inflicted on this country’s psyche over just the last few years.
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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County).
