As with its corporate subsidiary CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center had a minor meltdown over Bruce Springsteen’s Jeep ad during the Super Bowl calling for people to meet in “the middle.” First up was professional hater Gabriel Hays, who whined that Springsteen couldn’t possibly be a credible advocate for moderation because he had once criticized President Trump:
Melodramatic and patronizing corporate TV ads are as big a part of the Super Bowl as a Tom Brady appearance, though New Jersey music legend Bruce Springsteen’s obnoxious Jeep ad about the “ReUnited of America” took patronizing to a whole new level.
Considering “The Boss” has been slamming Trump and his supporters (which he has called “bums” and a “fucking nightmare”) for the better part of five years, his 2021 Jeep Super Bowl ad seemed less an appeal to unity, than a call for Trumpers to get on with Democrats’ far left ambitions for their country.
The ad, produced by Jeep and starring the “Born to Run” singer, made a heavy appeal for Americans to find common ground with one another after a contentious Donald Trump presidency. The setting of the ad was a chapel in Lebanon, Kansas, the exact geographical middle of the United States of America. The singer elaborated on the obvious metaphor with soulful and somber words: “All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle. It’s no secret the middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear.”
At the end of the ad, the words “To the ReUnited States of America” flashed on screen. Oh, back to normal, is it?
Of course, millions of conservatives have seen opportunistic Democrat politicians lie to them for years about Russian collusion, the first impeachment of Donald Trump (and his second). They’ve seen Dems endorse the Black Lives Matter protests which led to $2 billion worth of property damage and dozens of murders and the same conservatives have had the pleasure of being called deplorables, racists and rubes every step of the way.
Springsteen, a proud Dem, has done his fair share of demonizing these conservatives by going after their presidential candidate. Springsteen blistered Trump a few months before the 2020 election. In an interview with Atlantic, Springsteen called Trump a “to democracy,” adding that the then-president was standing in the way of “any kind of reform” that could stem from the Black Lives Matter protests, which were raging at the time.
“I don’t know if our democracy could stand another four years of his custodianship. These are all existential threats to our democracy and our American way of life,” he added in that interview. Of course that means the 74 million who voted for Trump are that threat.
For all his virtiol against Springsteen, Hays offered no evidence that the Boss is wrong about Trump.
After the Super Bowl, Kyle Drennen served up his own little rant, similarly whining about Springsteen’s purported divisiveness (read: he’s not a conservative):
On Monday, all three network morning shows hailed left-wing, bomb-throwing rocker Bruce Springsteen for a Jeep Super Bowl ad in which he hypocritically preached unity and meeting in the political “middle.” Rather than call out the singer for his history of incendiary partisan rhetoric, hosts all seemed to experience collective amnesia as they pretended he was the perfect messenger to bring people together.
[…]This is the same Springsteen who during a concert on the Today show plaza in September of 2007 launched into a unhinged political tirade accusing the Bush administration of “rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of our great city New Orleans and the people, an attack on the Constitution and the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war.”
In 2007, just days after Springsteen’s Today show tantrum, CBS’s 60 Minutes as “an artist in progress” who was “questioning whether America has lost its way at home.”
Just before Barack Obama was sworn into office in January of 2009, Springsteen couldn’t resist the urge to kick the departing Republican president on his way out. He tarred the Bush administration as a “nightmare” in which “thousands and thousands of people died” and “lives were ruined.”
Drennen’s rant against Springsteen’s anti-Iraq War sentiments are odd, since we thought the MRC was no longer proud of the Iraq War, given how it complained that obituaries for conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer noted that he helped lay the right-wing ideological framework for the war.
Drennen also cited another ideological crime Springsteen committed — he once vacationed with an Obama: “After vacationing with the Obamas on a luxury yacht the following year, Springsteen promptly released an anti-Trump protest song.”
Drennen concluded by huffing: “Despite the sycophantic claims from NBC, ABC, and CBS, Bruce Springsteen is the least qualified person to talk of unity or meeting in the middle. Perhaps he should lead by example and apologize for all the disunity he’s fostered.” Of course, both Hays and Drennen have proven they won’t even broach a discussion of unity with someone they not only clearly despise but need to maintain as a political target as part of their jobs, so that would make them even less “qualified” than Springsteen, no?