"Lota folks hurtin' back home right now"
In the middle of a three-hour, barnstorming concert last night in Munich's Olympiastadion, the inimitable Bruce Springsteen switched from cheerful to solemn and said "Lota folks hurtin' back home right now" as he introduced The River, which contains the sobering lyrics, "I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company / But lately there ain't been much work on account of the economy." No doubt, the Boss had been told before going on stage that the 21st-century US economy had shed a shocking 467,000 jobs in June.
This was the ideal opportunity for a courageous Rainy Day to have shouted out, "Where is the stimulus, Bruce? You campaigned for Hope and Change, remember!" But fearing what thousands of manic, Germanic Obama cultists might do to such a heretic, we let it go. Still, someone is going to start asking questions soon. As Camille Paglia pointed out in Salon last month: "Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo. All the backtracking and spin doctoring in the world will not erase that major blunder, which made the new president seem reckless, naive and out of control of his own party, which was in effect dictating to him from Capitol Hill."
So, the next time Bruce Springsteen comes to town, he'd better not try the "Lota folks hurtin' back home right now" line or he'll be gettin' a helluva hecklin' here. Guess that's me committed to buying another ticket, then. Talking of hard times, the highlight of last night's concert for us was the heartbreaking This Hard Land. Dylan would be proud of him here.
