SPRINGSTEEN AND OTHER CORONAMANIC SELLOUTS

Fifty (!) years ago, living in New Jersey and having a big sister with the then-new vinyl LP, Born to Run, I became a Bruce Springsteen fan. I first saw him at a half-empty show with a $6 ticket.

Two years later, on a June 1978 Saturday night, I and a group of pals went to see him play at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. They picked me up at the Shore, where I’d been for the day. We six overenthusiastically rode north on the NJ Turnpike in an old station wagon to see a sold-out show.

At one point on the route, we had the choice to head to the Island via Brooklyn on Interstate 278. At that critical moment, while we were all carrying on, I distractedly, incorrectly shouted that Rick, the driver, should opt for Interstate 287 instead. This sent us far out of the way and put us way behind schedule. Although the show started late, we missed the first six songs. (We asked the people behind us). In life’s larger scheme, this was a tiny error. But while riding around lost, the crew was crestfallen.

I felt bad that my mistake had let my friends down, especially because we each bought our costly tickets with our low-wage summer jobs and they’d gone out of the way to pick me up. I apologized, as I’ve apologized for other stuff I’ve messed up. I didn’t like admitting I’d goofed. But sometimes, one must take responsibility for what s/he’s done or failed to do and the harm we’ve thereby caused others.

—

It’s too late to undo the permanent damage from the lockdowns, school closures, shots and massively inflationary federal giveaways. But those who harangued others about being grandma-killers or super-spreaders need to apologize for being so thoroughly wrong.

Saying “We didn’t know” isn’t an apology, it’s an excuse. And a poor one. Just as I should have known to take Route 278 instead of Route 287—looking at a map would have helped—Americans should have read-up, thought a little and known that most people were at zero viral risk. The Coronamanic should have seen that the lockdowns, school closures, masks, testing/tracing and shots were plainly unscientific and hurt hundreds of millions of people.

—

In December 1980, I saw Springsteen play in Rochester, NY while a blizzard went on outside. Stranded on the return trip, I slept on the tile floor of the bus station until the next morning. At the time, it seemed worth it.

A dozen years passed. On a 1992 weeknight, my younger brother had an extra ticket so I went with him to see the Boss for what turned out to be the final time. Entering the arena, the sidewalk scene was far more subdued and the concertgoers were noticeably older than they had been at the previous shows. We sat in arena’s last row behind the stage. Even from that distance, we could see teleprompters on the stage floor, scrolling the song lyrics. Who knew that rockers sometimes forgot the words?

When the main show ended, but before the encore, about a third of the audience, including us, flowed to the exits. We grown-ups had kids and jobs, needed to go home and get some sleep.

Seeing a crusty, raspy old guy doing the same old songs with the same old persona had worn out for me. Springsteen hasn’t written a good song in almost four decades. Nonetheless, a substantial group of nostalgic fans still pays high prices to see a guy who’s long since lost his creative mojo. I’ve read that former NJ governor, Chris Christie, has seen 140 Springsteen shows. This love is unrequited. Hyper-partisan Springsteen hates Christie’s politics and thus, won’t speak with him.

—

Far worse than artistically flatlining—because it’s unrealistic to expect content creators to endlessly come up with good, new material—Springsteen has lost the principles he espoused as a younger person. In his early years, he used to perform, after a monologue about his overbearing father, a cover version of The Animals’ “It’s My Life, and I’ll Do What I Want.” This defiant declaration resonated strongly with his teen and twenty-something concertgoers.

Over the decades, countless other music stars have also belted out hits exalting personal sovereignty. For example:

Sammy Davis Jr.: “I gotta be me!”

Frank Sinatra: “I did it my way!”

Billy Joel: “This is my life. Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone!”

Jimi Hendrix: “Get off of my back, if you want to get out of here alive! Freedom, so I can live!”

A few weeks ago, I heard Springsteen’s sidekick, Little Steven, on his radio show deliver a multi-minute, pro-freedom diatribe in corny, culturally appropriated urban-speak. He ended by proclaiming, “So, if you’re trying to control me, get out of my way!”

Freedom is a quintessentially American theme. But where were Bruce, Little Steven and the rest of the celebrity freedom lovers when people in many nations endured the most extreme and senseless deprivation of freedom ever and demanded that others stay inside and inject experimental substances or lose their jobs or places in school over a microbe that didn’t threaten remotely healthy individuals?

In 2020, the cranky, crusty and perhaps over-or-under-psych-medicated “Boss” demanded that everyone “wear the goddamn mask!” In 2021, he required concertgoers to inject mRNA. The neo-authoritarian, medical segregationist Springsteen received some bad karma when, as did most jabbers, he “got Covid” several times. Later, his peptic ulcer terminated his tour. Ulcers are one of many ailments linked to the shots.

But yes, let’s all follow Bruce’s advice. And The Science.

Like so many of the Covophobic, Bruce was sure he was righteous and smart. But he and the loud majority didn’t know shit about biology, “The Virus” or what was really going on in hospitals. Nor did they consider the immense harm the closures, restrictions and shots were causing. The Coronamanic Boss, who long ago lived through his vital years and made his fortune, joined the benighted, angry mob who wanted to push others around. Seemingly oblivious to those younger and less wealthy than he, he supported isolating those at no viral risk and requiring them to take shots they didn’t need and that have already injured and killed many. Intergenerational injustice.

—

Back in the day, Springsteen also covered The Temptations’/Edwin Starr’s anti-war song, “War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!”

Before launching into that anthem, he spoke of the Vietnam War and concluded his intro by emphasizing “Blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed!”

Pre-Coronamania, it was cool to hate the government. But oddly, when the government implemented the worst policy ever, ostensibly in response to respiratory virus, being a statist authoritarian became fashionable.

Just as there are countless songs about freedom, countless ostensibly rebellious musicians have written and sung loudly about “Fighting the Power:” Public Enemy, NWA, Rage Against the Machine, Bob Marley, Green Day, Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg, et al.

Multi-millionaire musicians pose as radicals because doing so builds their street cred, their audiences and thus, performers’ bank accounts. They let fame swell their heads and see themselves as influencers, entitled to tell people where they can go, what they must put on their faces and in their bodies or who to vote for.

—

Multi-millionaire pseudo-radical celebrities: Springsteen, Streisand, Pearl Jam, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Madonna, Oprah, Rihanna, Kanye, Jeff Koons and many others each got million-plus-dollar federal PPP giveaways. Streisand used taxpayer money to pay for gardeners on her estate. Instead of reaching into their own deep pockets, those listed above and many others used government money to pay their entourages not to work and to perpetuate the illusion of an unprecedented health crisis.

Via these giveaways, the feds bought off nearly all celebrity opposition to the lockdowns and shots. Few newly-anti-freedom performers considered the near-term social costs and the long-term economic costs of these measures. Critical thinking about the Covid overreaction was deemed politically incorrect.

Lately, Springsteen has interrupted European shows to rail against “authoritarian, treasonous, corrupt and moronic” Trump. I get that it’s cool to be anti-establishment, no matter how old and rich you are. And while Trump shouldn’t have signed the CARES Act or hyped Operation Warp Speed, the “authoritarian, treasonous, corrupt and moronic” labels seem more aptly applied to Biden, the incoherent vaxx mandater who lost his “patience” with the unvaxxed, and histrionically called his political opponents “extremists,” “semi-fascists,” “clear and present dangers” and “threats to democracy,” while signing a series of plainly unconstitutional executive orders, owning two mansions and sitting atop $10 million despite a public sector salary, bankrolling a drug-addled son and setting him up in the family’s influence-peddling racket. Somehow, Bruce found Biden’s oppressive edicts and dishonest dealings unworthy of mention on-stage.

—

The simplistic worldviews and politics of the faux radical music makers are just more performance. They’re also dysfunctionally superficial. And they overlook the deeply corrupt systems and institutions that meet in enclave like Davos, DC and Geneva and are driving America’s and the world’s economies and societies off a cliff. As the Scamdemic showed—but only to those who consumed selected alternative media—mostly unfamous individuals control a shadowy network of governmental entities, corporations, NGOs and private public partnerships that plan, pull off and profit from scams like the Covid response, the childhood vaxx onslaught and an endless series of wars. In the phony name of saving humanity from respiratory viruses—which aren’t a serious threat in the modern world—biosecurity operatives, propagandists, censors and crypto-tyrants scare a gullible populace into tolerating and even supporting oppressive, bankrupting interventions.

Unaware that they’re being manipulated, much of the public wrongly glorifies celebrity rockers who simplistically villainize a few politicians. Astute freedom and health advocates should, instead, expose such destructive, well-known public health bureaucracies as NATO, FEMA, Gates, the CDC and WHO, Pharma/Biotech companies and bureaucrats like Fauci and Collins, who portray themselves, and who the complicit media misportray, as smart and benevolent.

Those who seek to protect bodily sovereignty, health and freedom of information should also expose such nefarious entities and individuals as CISA, Tedros, BARDA, Bourla, NSC, Pottinger, DARPA, Davi, the GEC and the DTRA, et al., whom the complicit media never mention. This covert network is too complex, diffuse and secretive to villainize. It’s much simpler and more emotionally appealing to demonize an individual politician and his party than to call out those who pull the strings behind the scenes.

As Bob Dylan sang, “Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.” This has certainly been true during the Scamdemic. And it’s not just men. These days, women, like Birx, Whitmer and Ardern, also do deals with devils. So, especially, do invidious and insidious institutions.

Rockers and other celebrities are demagogues who don’t know about any of this. Any who did know this, and pointed it out, would soon be marginalized into oblivion. Or, as have some of those, e.g., PCR test inventor Kary Mullis, or African or Eastern European presidents who spoke against the viral scam, they might die under mysterious circumstances.

Perhaps in bizarre gardening accidents.