Springsteen's Political Public Service Announcement On The Today Show

[kpete]

Springsteen Gets Political on Today Show
by rjmac
Fri Sep 28, 2007 at 07:36:37 AM PDT

Bruce Springsteen, promoting his new album by doing a concert "in the plaza" on the Today Show, did a spoken intro to "Living In the Future" that was an overtly political public service announcement.

After Clarence Clemons played the sax intro for the song, and as the band vamped in the background, The Boss opened with some lighthearted banter and NBC-centric jokes and then got serious:

This is a song called Livin' In the Future. But it's really about what's happening now. Right now. It's kind of about how the things we love about America, cheeseburgers, French fries, the Yankees battlin' Boston... the Bill of Rights (holds up microphone, urging crowd to cheer) ... v-twin motorcycles... Tim Russert's haircut, trans-fats and the Jersey Shore... we love those things the way womenfolk love Matt Lauer.

But over the past six years we've had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeus corpus, the neglect of that great city New Orleans and its people, an attack on the Constitution. And the loss of our best men and women in a tragic war.

This is a song about things that shouldn't happen here happening here.

So right now we plan to do something about it, we plan to sing about it. I know it's early, but it's late. So come and join us.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/28/101850/975
VIDEO Clips: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20995086/
http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&brand=msnbc&vid=e717d3c9-de72-4daf-9664-d55ce7cb9e00&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:45faa98f-3264-490d-8bd1-72e72cbf62b5,c586e3a4-0373-444a-b03b-046cce897194,870b2cf1-5acb-4681-9bb8-a2f6c04c2795,d7ecb4b7-842f-4a86-92b7-32d6a9739349,7bf48160-0f5f-4af7-ad19-5b4c36ecc355&from=Msnbc&tab=m368