Yesterday was Veterans Day, which is a day that Dick Cheney asks for a deferment and pretty much every chicken-hawk neocon pretends to care about the troops that help their defense stock portfolios. Naturally, Fox News was crapping all over itself with bounds of chauvinism under the guise of patriotism. And while we’re on the subject of exploiting the troops for our own feel-good benefit, they do not fight for our freedom and haven’t for years now. While what they do is noble, they fight to better Halliburton and Lockheed Martins’ bottom line and stock price.
Seeing a golden opportunity to attack a liberal entertainer on Veterans Day, one of Fox News’ smug and all grown up mean girls totally missed the point of a fairly obvious protest song
Earlier today, Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt hilariously said that Springsteen’s performing Fortunate Son-a song that exposed the socio-economic overtones of the Vietnam War Son-was the legendary Jersey-centric singer denigrating America.
“Taking shots at the red, white and blue,” Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt reported on Wednesday. “People expressing outrage on Twitter, saying the song bashes soldiers going to war.”
“Some are going, wait a minute, this is all about the vets, and that particular song was intended to be an anti-war anthem,” host Steve Doocy opined. “Is it really appropriate to be performing it in front of so many vets who volunteered to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan?” “Yeah, you’re doing this for an audience of veterans, and it’s almost a slap in the face,” co-host Anna Kooiman agreed. “These producers should have known their audience, and known what they were getting with people like Bruce Springsteen.” (Raw Story)
It seems Springsteen performed Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” during Tuesday’s Concert for Valor on the National Mall and broadcast on HBO. For those of us with more than two brain cells, the message behind the song is painfully obvious. The song was more or less an anti-Washingtonian protest song and commentary on the wealthy offspring (or “fortunate sons”) that were able to avoid the Vietnam War. Basically, a poetic blue-collar anthem.
Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes / They send you down to war / And when you ask them, ‘How much should we give?’ / They only answer, more, more, more,” Fogerty’s lyrics say. “It ain’t me, it ain’t me / I ain’t no Senator’s son / It ain’t me, it ain’t me / I ain’t no fortunate one.” (Raw Story)
So you’re saying Fox News can’t grasp the subtle inference of a song that deals with the lesser-off classes? I’m NOT shocked and bewildered. After all, put insight and empathy on a resume for Fox News and your resume will likely be reported to the FBI.
Shockingly, one Fox News host was actually able to grasp the actual intent of the song.
“I’m sort of torn about it because the song really is about the elites, it’s about — written in the late 1960s, when John Fogerty wrote it, it was really about those politicians who he saw their sons and daughters were not going to go off in fight in a war,”co-host Clayton Morris explained. “And that the rest of the country was going to have to fight to save the rest of us, and help the rest of us.” (Raw Story)
The real irony, however, is that Bruce Springsteen was getting flak over the Creedence song when it’s his “Born in the USA” that was so famously misunderstood and co-opted by conservatives. Ronald Reagan famously used it as his theme song and Republicans to this day still improperly use it. Springsteen originally wrote this about the problems Vietnam veterans encountered when they returned to America, not as the cheap and empty patriotism that cynical politicians think it to mean. Springsteen himself finally opened up about this in a 2005 interview with NPR, saying: “This was when the Republicans first mastered the art of co-opting anything and everything that seemed fundamentally American, and if you were on the other side, you were somehow unpatriotic.”
Sorry Bruce-Republicans love co-opting anything that sounds very white and christian; they can’t be bothered with actually looking beyond a superficial title.
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