How the same man who wrote "I'm Going Down," "Brilliant Disguise," "Blinded by the Light" (the better/original version), and "Badlands" could be such a pretentious, hypocritical buffoon when it comes to politics is beyond me.

Well, he did write "Born to Run," which is a terrible song that makes me want to vomit every time I hear it. But that's about the only one of his songs that purely stinks. Well, that and "57 Channels".

bruce still has hell of blue collar cred. go to one of his shows, seeger sessions or e-street. the dude takes some time to talk some straight humanist politics to the blue-jeaned masses. also, his seeger session americana record is pretty much the most old-school blue collar musical artifact you could find at Virgin Records.

@TheHonJudgeSmails: can you expand on his being pretentious and hypocritical?

Hey America - Obama's Come For You!

I suck.

No matter what Bruce Springsteen says, I'm not ready to walk out on the wire with Obama.

But he also endorsed Microsoft Vista so...

+ Watch video

oh great now everyone's going to think i stole the obvious joke i've been doing all day from gawker. jerk!

ps if you are reading this, bruce (maybe you google yourself a lot), please e-mail me. why because you look intersting.

@blakeley: this version is better

+ Watch video

@TheHonJudgeSmails: Not to be disagreeable or start anything (that said, I'm going out on my bike before it can happen), but Born to Run is one of the great tunes in the history of rock and roll.

kbai

@TheHonJudgeSmails: You are not allowed to have an opinion anymore, if that's the way you're going treat them.

Speakin as a bitter, clingy, blue-collar voter, I totally take to heart the political opinions of former-blue-collar multimillionaire pop singers. Which is why I always vote the way Madonna tells me to.

Ok, but who's Rick Springfield endorsing?

@TheHonJudgeSmails: You read my mind. Barack is 57 channels and nothing on.

So vote for Barack with your faithless kiss,or will we leave each other alone like this on the streets of Philadelphia.

bruce springsteen is a pretty together, well-informed guy (in addition to being a fucking american legend). i really doubt anyone has any dirt to slang about him re: being a hypocrite/specious/etc - and unless smails has some non-petty examples that'll blow our collective fucking minds, then i really feel like we should just crank up Dancer in the Dark and be glad that the world ain't all bad. i mean, seriously. talk about mock-fisting the golden cow in the age of no-golden cows and lots of fisting.

So McCAIn has the Straight Talk Express... and Obama's got a Pink Cadillac. Sounds fair.

@rosaluxembourgeoise: La-la la-laaaa.... La-la la-laaaa...

@Mike_Jahn & TheHonJudgeSmails: There's a great schism in the world of music fandom, which splits listeners into two camps: People who think xylophone is acceptable for rockin', and people who don't. It's a stark division -- neither side will give the other an ounce of quarter, and you have to pick a side.

Poor Hillary. Had to settle for old Meat Loaf.

@moff: It's like, is it "Keith Richards" or "Keith Richard"? And, if it's the latter, who inhaled the rest of them?

In a related story, the corpse of Frank Sinatra says McCain is a standup guy.

Teacher, let me tell you a little story
Just this morning
My wife and I
Went to the hotel in the hills
That's right,
The Bel-Air Hotel
Where a very good friend of ours
Happens to be staying
And the name of that young man
Is Mr. Bruce Springsteen
That's right, yeah
Oh, we talked about some kind of woodblock or something
And this new guitar we like
And you know what he said to me?
I'll tell you want he said to me:
He said, "Rand, I'm tired.
How would you like to be The Boss for a while?"
Well, yeah!
Blow, Big Man, blow!

And Bob Roberts is bummed because his endorsement of Mitt "hows the hair" Romney didn't work out so well.

@TedSez: Now you're talking. Who's he endorsing? Is Huey Long still running?

@KarenUhOh: i actually started a facebook group called huey long in '08. it... um... sort of attracted the wrong crowd.

Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man, and I believe that Obama can.

Bruce Springsteen doesn't have blue-collar cred. He has music-critics-who-think-they-know-what-blue-collar-is cred. There's a difference. Oh, and he has Jersey-cred. But a that and a dollar will get you squat.

?@TedSez: @KarenUhOh:
Maybe you cheated
Maybe you lied
And maybe you have lost your mind
Maybe you're only thinking of yourself...

Too late to run, and it's
Too late to hide now
The time has come for us to say 'Goodbye now'
Mr. President, have pity on the working man.


Sigh. I can dream, can't I

@SpecialK: I had Jersey cred once, but it cleared up after a dose of penicillin.

@SpecialK: you're discounting the legions of blue collar workers who give him cred. get real.

You can hide from the numbers, and ignore the pain

Make crosses through the small states, throw Canadian Club down that drain

Waste your summer praying in vain for a Florida revote my sweet,

Well sure I'm no Kennedy, that's understood

All the redemption I can can offer girl is VP, that's if you're good

With a chance to beat McCain somehow, hey what else can we do now...

@TheHonJudgeSmails: I agree completely Smails. When famous entertainers have opinions it's pretentious. Unless they have Republican opinions, in which case they're just salt-of-the-earth regular people who happen to be obscenely rich.

Well Hillary's got The Stones. I think. She was in that movie that nobody saw.

@KimGordonsPanties: this thread was making me crazy. thank you.

Don't know much about Springsteen. But I do like to bowl a few frames at the Asbury Lanes.

@KimGordonsPanties: I agree. Salt of the Earth. I do nothing unless it's something Ted Nugent would do.

In related news, I just dressed myself in the bleeding skin of a deer, cut furrows in my flesh with barbed wire, killed and ate a mexican orphan with my teeth, shot an FBI agent, and bought an el Dorado with my pocket change.

@KimGordonsPanties: You hit the nail right on the head.

Toby Keith? Musical genius.

Adam Smith Couldn't Raise McCain.

@KarenUhOh: @Mediahohoho: I forget who it was, but some columnist said that Obama's "bitter small towners" speech was right out of Newman's "Rednecks."

Kerry did win Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, the Holy Nexus of Springstovia.

Smails just loves George Thorogood more than is healthy for a judge his age.

@TedSez: Well, they don't call it Pennsyltucky for nothing.

hey, here's an idea. let's have clinton take "you're my miss washington d.c." and confuse the shit out of everyone.

also, free asprin for all!

Every time the bitter, bitter right complains that all the good artists endorse candidates and espouse causes counter to their world view, I think of asshats like Ron Silver and Dennis Miller blathering about their man crushes on George Bush and Dick Cheney on Fox News and I understand that it's all pretty much based on envy and not understanding a fucking thing about art or humanity.

@KimGordonsPanties: Wow. Sometimes I think Smails takes a lot of flak for things he didn't say because of things he's said in other, completely unrelated threads.

But anyway, I've never really understood why people get so up in arms about celebrities expressing political opinions, when they don't bat an eye at, say, a plumber expressing his. Like, "God, I hate it when these no-nothing rock'n'rollers start spouting off! But plumbers -- well, everyone knows if you want a thoughtful opinion on something completely unrelated to plumbing, you should go to a plumber."

@moff: i think the key here is that the boss has always been overtly political. it's weird when celebs drop opinions with no apparent context or previous investment... but bruce has been open politically (and an obama style populist) for decades.

@Mike_Jahn: Reasonable people can disagree. However "Wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims and strap your hands 'cross my engines" just ain't my cup of tea.

@soybomb: Don't you find it just a little contradictory for such a wealthy man to attempt to paint himself and his art as champion of the blue collared?

@KimGordonsPanties: Not that I said anything even remotely approaching that, I will address your point: I share equal loathing for Toby Keith's political activism as I do for Bruce Springsteen's.

@moff:

Because even a total asshat won't take advice on anything but plumbing from a plumber, but this is a country full of pitiably stupid sheep who will do whatever their favorite actor/singer/reality TV retard tells them to do. The only responsible celebrity is a celebrity who comments in public on nothing but whatever the hell project he or she is promoting.

@The Cooler: This is very funny.