{"id":185454,"date":"2014-11-13T10:36:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T15:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/11\/13\/republicans-simply-do-not-understand-rock-and-roll\/"},"modified":"2014-11-13T10:36:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T15:36:00","slug":"republicans-simply-do-not-understand-rock-and-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/11\/13\/republicans-simply-do-not-understand-rock-and-roll\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Simply Do Not Understand Rock and Roll"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a concert on the Mall in Washington, DC for memorial day , and right wing heads exploded over his singing the John Fogerty song Fortunate Son<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s still unclear if Bruce Springsteen, one of the musicians at the center of the latest controversy, will be similarly apologetic. <\/span>

<\/span> Pretty much everyone has had something to say about Springsteen’s performance Tuesday at the “Concert for Valor,” an HBO musical event for veterans held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. <\/span>

<\/span> Performing with Zac Brown and Dave Grohl, Springsteen sang “Fortunate Son<\/i>,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s classic Vietnam War-era anthem that examines issues of class and jingoism in America. John Fogerty, the CCR frontman, said that his own experience as a drafted serviceman served as an inspiration for the song. <\/span>

<\/span> “I was the same age as the soldiers serving in Vietnam and from the same lower-middle class as them,” Fogerty once said<\/a>.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Springsteen also performed his hit “Born in the U.S.A.,” a song that, as the Washington Post’s Justin Moyer pointed out,<\/a> actually includes many of the same themes as “Fortunate Son.” <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, as Charlie Pierce pithily observes<\/a>, the song supports the troops,  It condemn the people who profit from war without fighting themselves:<\/p>\n

Apparently, one of the Fox peawits did notice what the song actually is about. (And it’s here where I point out that, unlike most of the people pretending to be offended today, Fogerty actually is a veteran, and that, when I was covering Vietnam veterans issues in the late 1970’s, most of the guys I talked to absolutely adored this song.) It’s not about people like this.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span>

<\/span>It’s about people like this.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span>

<\/span>Glad I could clear that up.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Republicans do not understand Rock and Roll.<\/p>\n

QED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a concert on the Mall in Washington, DC for memorial day , and right wing heads exploded over his singing the John Fogerty song Fortunate Son: It’s still unclear if Bruce Springsteen, one of the musicians at the center of the latest controversy, will be similarly apologetic. Pretty much everyone has had something …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1011,1006,1137,978,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-military","category-music","category-politics","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}