Springsteen In The UK – Dixie Chicks Redux?

In her excellent book, Shut Up and Sing, Fox News host Laura Ingraham zinged celebrities for using their platforms to lecture their audiences and followers about what they should believe politically. The gist of their screeds is usually one or both of the following: (1) they’re ashamed of or embarrassed for America if a Republican is the president, and (2) they expect everyone who is fair-minded to agree with their politics. Of course, 99.9 percent of the time, this means adhering to the far-left’s agenda.

Bruce Springsteen, an overrated performer in my admittedly biased opinion, is no stranger to making political statements. In fact, his song Born in the USA, while hailed as a patriotic anthem by people who don’t bother with the lyrics, is actually a lambasting of America as a cruel and heartless place. Granted, this critique seems reasonable when focused on how Vietnam War veterans were treated, by and large, when they returned home. However, there’s a lot more to the heart and soul of America than this singular failure. In another showing of his leftist beliefs, Springsteen appeared in a pro-Biden ad with former President “Divider-in-Chief” Barack Obama and nodded his head in sheepish agreement when Obama claimed, without a smidgen of evidence, that Springsteen’s sax player, an African-American, was regularly discriminated against when the band was on tour. This “discrimination” no doubt came exclusively from conservative white people in Obama’s mind.

With all this in mind, it comes as no surprise that Springsteen opened his latest tour in the UK with a diatribe against President Trump, complete with all of the usual accusations – threat to democracy, destroying the country, etc. This “performance” is reminiscent of the former Dixie Chicks country band over twenty years ago, also in the UK. At that time, lead singer Natalie Mains proclaimed her embarrassment to be an American and that she certainly did not support the policies of President George W. Bush that, to her, justified her anti-Bush screed. It’s instructive to note that the Dixie Chicks’ popularity plummeted soon after Mains’ uncalled-for ripping of an American president on foreign soil.

Now, all of this doesn’t mean that I go along with President Trump’s insult-filled rejoinder to Springsteen. He didn’t need to get down into the same gutter as the singer to make his point, but a comeback of some sort was certainly appropriate. For too long, leftist entertainers have not been called out for venting their contempt of conservatives – from Billy Crystal at the Oscars, to Lebron James in the locker room, to late-night hosts Kimmel and Colbert, to singers like Taylor Swift and Springsteen, these are people who are simply incapable of keeping their politics to themselves. And worse, trying to intimidate the rest of us who don’t agree with them into thinking we’re bad people for not doing so. Is it any wonder that those who see Marxism as a religion may have a point, the way its beliefs are constantly being pushed on us?

Springsteen’s diatribe comes against a backdrop of heightened anti-Trump aggression, as if it were possible to dial that up any further. Disgraced former FBI director James Comey’s feigned ignorance of the “86-47” message with shells he so eagerly photographed on his routine “walk on the beach” is the latest example of the political left trying to minimize the indefensible. Of course, Comey knows perfectly well how this message can be interpreted, especially by those who would be gladly rid of Trump in any way possible. After two thankfully unsuccessful assassination attempts, such a message is red meat for future would-be assassins. 

The question is, how much of a price should Comey pay for his transgression, given the potential explosiveness of the shell message? No less than Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard believes a prison sentence for Comey is appropriate. And how much of a price should Bruce Springsteen pay in lost concert sales (his ticket prices are stratospheric to begin with) and reputation after popping off about our president in a foreign country? If history is any indicator with the Dixie Chicks’ experience, Springsteen better hope his diatribe was worth it.