Posts Tagged ‘sargasso sea’
Why my next book will be about Bruce Springsteen
July 26, 2011
No, I’m not happy about the concessions President Obama is making to the right wing in a last, desperate attempt to save us all from a constitutional and financial meltdown whose consequences most of us can’t even imagine.
The belligerent–and (though I think it’s juvenile to make fun of people’s names) boehnheaded Republican leadership represented by John Boehner (and cheered on from afar by newly-minted millionaire Sarah Palin, who wants to keep all she’s got) would be willing to sink the ship on which we all find ourselves in 2011 in order to drown the president in 2012.
There’s a word for that. The word is “treason.”
President Obama has been forced to abandon his hopes of moving us forward. Now it’s all hands on deck to save us from drowning.
Among those whom I’d guess are sickened by the way the Republican right has dragged us all into this Sargasso Sea of self-destructive selfishness is Bruce Springsteen.
It was my admiration for the way Springsteen has maintained his artistic integrity over forty years–even as he matured and came to see that rock and roll was not in and of itself a cure for the human condition– that first interested me in writing about him.
Not to mention my flat out love for his music, both with and without the E Street Band.
But what’s come to interest me about him more, the more I’ve learned, has been my growing awareness of his unwavering concern about the gap–now a chasm–between the glorious promise that America once offered and the sordid reality of 21st century capitalism and the blighted political system that supports it.
The extraordinary journalist/essayist Mikal Gilmore interviewed Springsteen almost twenty-five years ago for a story included in Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock & Roll.
Here’s what Bruce Springsteen said, in 1987:
“The idea of America as a family is naive, maybe sentimental or simplistic, but it’s a good idea. And if people are sick and hurting and lost, I guess it falls on everybody to address these problems in some fashion. Because injustice, and the price of that injustice, falls on everyone’s heads. The economic injustice falls on everyone’s head and steals everyone’s freedom. Your wife can’t walk down the street at night. People keep guns in their homes. They live with a greater sense of apprehension, anxiety, and fear than they would in a more just and open society. It’s not an accident, and it’s not simply that there are ‘bad’ people out there. It’s an inbred part of the way that we are all living. It’s a product of what we have accepted, what we have acceded to. And whether we mean it or not, our silence has spoken for us in some fashion.”
How much worse is it now, almost twenty-five years later?
Boehner says sink the ship and Sarah says reload.
And even those of us who can converse on the internet are not the real victims.
The real victims are those who cannot.
Posted in 2012, Joe McGinniss, Obama, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | 
Tags: boehner, bruce springsteen, mikal gilmore, republican, sargasso sea, treason | 
36 Comments »
Sarah Palin Hits Daily Double: Obama Okays New Alaskan Oil Drilling & Huckabee Says He Won’t Run
May 15, 2011
The president’s announcement, which included plans for expanded drilling in Alaska demonstrate[s] his commitment to reducing oil imports by increasing domestic production…Mr. Obama said the administration would begin to hold annual auctions for oil and gas leases in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, a 23-million-acre tract on the North Slope of Alaska. The move comes after years of demands for the auctions by industry executives and Alaska’s two senators, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat.
In crediting Murkowski and Begich for the policy change, The New York Times omitted the name of Sarah Palin, who’s been screaming about this for at least as long and even more loudly than have Alaska’s two U.S. senators.
Hours later, Mike Huckabee, who won the 2008 Iowa Caucus, announced he would not be a candidate next year.
Today’s news makes it clearer than ever that Sarah will have a second chance–and her last chance–at the brass ring of national political power.
And don’cha think she’s gonna take it?
Because Sarah is not an elected official, but only a celebrity screecher from the sidelines, she can’t claim credit (except on her Twitter and Facebook pages and on Fox News) for having persuaded President Obama to change his mind about the vital economic and environmental issues posed by the prospect of reopening Alaska’s North Slope to further exploration (some would say “exploitation”) by Big Oil.
And won’t it gall her to see Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in particular, cited as one who made “demands” to which President Obama eventually caved?
Especially with Huckabee handing her, gift wrapped, the USA’s evangelical base, it seems obvious that Sarah will announce her candidacy for president later this year: if she doesn’t, a year from now people won’t even remember how she spells her name. (Is it p-a-l-i-n, or p-a-l-l-i-n, as in “pallin’ around with terrorists”?)
Even if, as many argue, the personal bottom line of http:www.Palingrifters.com is what Sarah cares about most (or only), she must recognize that as soon as she definitively takes herself out of the GOP 2012 candidate pool (aka “The Sargasso Sea”), nobody will care any more about what she says, what she wears, how she looks, Track’s latest brush with the law, Bristol’s latest plastic surgery, Willow’s latest brush with the law, or even whether she really gave birth to Trig.
Sarah’s greatest fear is irrelevance. What if she fell in a forest and nobody heard?
Bruce Springsteen might as well have been writing Fade Away for Sarah in 1980, when she was a sophomore at Wasilla High:
I don’t wanna fade away
Oh I don’t wanna fade away
Tell me what can I do what can I say
Cause darlin’ I don’t wanna fade away
Do you really think she’ll just fade away now?
Having come out of nowhere to get this far, will she go gently into that good night without even a last hurrah?
Especially after Huckabee’s Saturday night announcement that he won’t run,
His decision to forgo a run presumably leaves that space wide open for Ms. Palin, a self described “Bible-believing Christian”
Doesn’t it seem that God is working overtime this weekend to open doors for her so she can plow through?
Hope he gets at least time-and-a-half.
Posted in 2012, evangelical, Fox, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, Palin children, right wing, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | Tags: bruce springsteeen, doorman, evangelical, fade away, god, huckabee, lisa murkowski, mark begich, new york times, sargasso sea, the river, willow palin | 30 Comments »
