Born to run?

While Bruce Springsteen’s endorsement of Barack Obama was at first considered to be a campaign coup for the embattled Democratic candidate, subsequent scrutiny of the Oscar-winning singer/songwriter have revealed a number of troublesome opinions and positions, not the least of which is his characterization of the working-class people of New Jersey as “tramps” with “no place left to hide” who cling to their “hemi-powered drones” and “suicide machines.”

He has also insulted lower- and higher-income Americans alike with his assertions that “poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king” and that America’s factory workers are dangerously bitter and unbalanced, stating that they “walk through these gates with death in their eyes.”

He has even gone so far as to criticize the troops, stating that while our Vietnam War enemies, the Vietcong, are “still there,” our veterans of that war are “all gone.”

Even the institution of Christianity is not safe from attack, as is clear from Springsteen’s charge that “God’s drifting in heaven,” and that the “Devil’s in the mailbox.” Clearly he means to intimate that the Christian God is a flip-flopper, while Satan is as accessible as the latest offer from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Many Christians have also objected to the endorsement of premarital sex and birth control implicit in his statement that “Bobby said he’d pull out, Bobby stayed in,” and also that the resulting child, born out of wedlock, “wasn’t any sin.”

Indeed, not unlike the candidate he is endorsing, many have speculated that Springsteen may have at one time been a practicing Muslim, perhaps even a member of Al-Qaida, as witnessed by references to a “dry and troubled country” beneath “Allah’s blessed rain,” which administration intelligence sources have, under condition of anonymity, conjectured may lie in the mountainous Tora-Bora region of Afghanistan. While collusion with anti-American militants may seem unlikely for a man of Springsteen’s fame and stature, Clinton campaign staffers have sent out emails reminding voters that Springsteen is the same man who once asked an accomplice to “pick up a little dynamite,” while he would “pick up a little gun.” While it’s not clear what his plan to “make that highway run” would have accomplished, his choice of co-conspirator, an otherwise unknown young woman named Rosalita, makes clear that his feelings regarding illegal immigration are not in keeping with the majority of the American public’s.