Booooooooooorn in the US Fucking A

Much has been made over the last 30 years, including on these...pages?... about Born in the USA being misunderstood. While I scoff now, I remember how easy it was to get swept up in the fist-pumpingness of the song; now even I wonder how Bruce himself could've let that happen. I do remember reading once that he had to choose between the released version and the original, stark, acoustic version and decided the former was just simply a better song. I agree, I love the song. But once we learned of the irony of that song, should we trust Bruce's other, supposedly non-ironic songs? E Street Paradox: Bruce Springsteen and sincerity:

If we’re supposed to believe that “Born in the U.S.A.” is intentionally ironic, what does that do to our understanding of the rest of Bruce’s songs? “The Promised Land,” from 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, for example, deals with very similar themes to “Born in the U.S.A.”, with a worker hard on his luck who nevertheless believes that one day things will get better, that there is a “promised land” to be had. Same story, different meanings: Can one be ironic, and the other sincere? How are we supposed to tell the difference?

But ultimately, the utter sincerity that makes him appear old-fashioned is simultaneously what makes him so postmodern. Sincerity is, by its very definition, a performance: an outward rendering of a supposed inner self. And that’s just what postmodern MTV culture thrived on: destroying the notion that there is – or ever can be – a “true self,” by performing in all kinds of ways. With his own brand of irony, then, Bruce fits right in with the Madonnas, Princes, and MJs of the decade: we can interpret him any way we want. We can make him in our own image. There might be a joke here somewhere, but, as he sings on “Dancing in the Dark,” “the laugh’s on me.”

I only know that my favorite ever Bruce moment of any show I've seen is at the first show I was ever at, when he ripped through the song with an anger that had everyone's vein on their foreheads popping:

 Now, for a few years up to this point Bruce has been playing Born in the USA in what some consider it's original form, the solo 12-string slide guitar version that was meant for Nebraska. So when between songs Bruce started talking about the war and I picked up that he was gonna play the song, I kinda thought "piss break." But he was talking about the mistake we were making, and then a fucking vein almost popped out of his forehead and he said "This is a song called Born in the USA" and Max' snare snapped and what followed was one of the angriest 5-6 minutes I've ever seen in a show before or since. Dude spit every word. And it wasn't cute, and nobody sang along, and it wasn't "anthemic." It's the song I most remember from that show, and it was bone-shattering. Like it was meant to be. Like it always was.

Still a great, kinda heart-breaking video of an America we wonder was even there in the first place.