People are morons when it comes to lyrics and the 'role' of musicians

My friend over at Scrivenings is wondering why some Bruce Springsteen fans are saying things like, "What gives him the right to preach politics! The dude needs to shut up to me about his politics and sing his damn songs!" It seems that these people should have realized that Bruce Springsteen, for crying out loud, has always been about politics. Anyway, for more about this, go check out my friend's blog. I don't want to recap what he said, just add to it.

People are morons when it comes to lyrics. Case in point: Reagan and Springsteen. Good grief. "Got in a little hometown jam/ So they put a rifle in my hand/ Sent me off to a foreign land/ To go and kill the yellow man." Yeah, those are great words for your ultra-conservative Republican ticket. Idiots. Too high on their horses to spend five minutes listening to someone's art to see if it's appropriate for appropriation.

And here's my most recent favorite. I haven't seen this ad for about a six months, but there for a few weeks, it ran often enough to grate my skin to blood every time I saw it.

The Wrangler jeans ad. I don't think I blogged about it at the time, because I was trying to pretend it didn't exist in the world. But it was so insanely bonehead that I will never forget it.

Picture American flags flying and horses and butts in Wrangler jeans. Smiling men scooping up their brown-haired girlfriends and swinging them around, dusty shitkickers high in the air. Got it? Now this is the music:

Creedence Clearwater Revival. Fortunate Son. I kid you not. Did you see this ad too? Of course, they only play the first two lines: "Some folks are born made to wave the flag, Ooh, they're red, white and blue."

Jackasses.

And I'll go see the Springsteen Anti-Bush tour, for a lot of reasons, but especially to see the Dixie Chicks. I love them. Awesome musicians. I love Natalie Maines' voice. Poor Natalie, razzed to tears during her whole ashamed-of-Bush episode. But I guess, in a way, her going through all that has allowed fluffy girls like Kirsten Dunst to floof all over Hollywood saying "Bush is a moron" without being flayed alive.

And it was worse for the Chicks because they were considered country music. Beleeeeve me, I know those country music politics. My cousin's husband is deep in the industry (a nationally syndicated country music radio personality) and he burned the Chicks' disks along with the rest of Nashville. But I have always thought that, intentional or not, it was brilliant on the part of the Chicks to speak out in such a brash way. They got scared, yes, and tried to backpedal, but now they're not *country music* anymore. And being rejected by those people is a beautiful thing difficult to attain.