August 10, 2004

Telling Off The Boss

George Miller, my erstwhile London correspondent who went off and started his own blog (the nerve!) has a good - no, excellent - commentary about Bruce Springsteen's decision to perform concerts on behalf of the Kerry campaign. In "The Boss Takes A Dive," Miller upholds Springsteen's right to be political in his art, but says he's "marginalised himself, culturally, in the American culture war" by agreeing to headline a series of anti-Bush concerts sponsored by Moveon.org.

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.