— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
By Stephen Golub, originally published on A Promised Land, April 7, 2024
He had me at “Light of Day.”
It’s one of my five favorite Bruce Springsteen songs. He opened his March 31 San Francisco concert with it. I was lucky enough to be there.
The high-octane tune is about a trucker driving hard after a week on the road, determined to get down to good times in Galveston by Saturday night. But it’s more generally about pushing ahead with hope after getting “a little lost along the way” and about turning the corner to find the light of day.
Similarly, Bruce’s entire performance was about far more than just putting on a show, as I learned from both him and a fellow audience member over the course of the evening. More on that in a minute.
With age and recent illness looming over our hero, my stepson/fellow fan Trevor and I knew that this might be our last chance to take in Bruce and his E Street Band in concert. It was our fifth time seeing him together, stretching back well over a decade. It was my thirtieth such Springsteen experience since watching him open for Chicago at Madison Square Garden in 1973.
As Springsteen told the throng early in the evening, the show is not just about what he and the band do. It also hinges on how we respond – acting in concert with him, if you will. The supposedly laid-back California crowd loudly lived up to our part of the bargain.
For those unfamiliar with what I’d call the Church of Bruce, his appeal partly flows from the degree to which his adherents identify with his music: One fellow fan calls it “the story of my life.”
The fans’ intense devotion also stems from his concerts’ joyful energy and audience engagement. At its peak, the interplay is akin to a religious revival, though with salvation subservient to fun. This “Light of Day” video from a 2000 New York City show exemplifies that, albeit in an extreme way:
Neither Trev nor I are the most demonstrative people in the world. But both of us danced, shouted, sang along and let it rip throughout the evening.
That someone pushing 75 could still push out three hours of non-stop singing, twisting, shouting and guitar/harmonica playing was astounding. As he playfully bellowed to the roaring crowd near the end of the show, “You’ve just seen the heart-stoppin’, pants-droppin’, earth-quakin’, booty-shakin’, love-makin’, Viagra-takin’, history-makin’ E Street Band!”
He proved it all night.
Springsteen’s music has always featured anger, angst, passion, pride, love, longing, hope and dreams. It’s ultimately about life.
As life has taken its toll, with friends and fellow band members passing on, he’s blended newer messages into the mix: treasure loved ones, here and gone; cherish their memories; relish each day.
The point hit home in an unexpectedly poignant way due to the pleasant 60-something woman – whom I’ll call Mary – seated beside us during the concert. Getting there early, Trev and I had lots of time to chat with her before the band came on. She’s a James Taylor fan, but attended the show (alone) because her late husband was a Springsteen devotee.
We didn’t pry into that very personal matter. But I couldn’t help but reflect a bit on why Mary was there: Maybe to feel the spirit of her beloved partner there with her?
That possibility reemerged in the middle of the concert, as the band eased into the somber “My City of Ruins.” I at first wondered why they were playing it at all during a resoundingly upbeat night. Bruce originally composed it a quarter-century ago to lament urban and economic rot in Asbury Park, New Jersey, near where he grew up. He recorded and reinterpreted the tune in his post-9/11 album, The Rising, as a tribute to devastated New York City.
In one inescapable sense it’s a dirge, marked by these lines:
Now there’s tears on the pillow, darling, where we slept
And you took my heart when you left
Without your sweet kiss my soul is lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again
But “My City of Ruins” is about more than sorrow. It’s also about beginning again in the face of unfathomable adversity, as its refrain repeatedly urges listeners to find strength and “rise up.”
And that’s what Bruce asked the assemblage to do as he introduced the song and yet again reinterpreted the tune in the process. His remarks made it not about a ruined city but about our resilient selves. He urged us to realize that our lost loved ones remain with us in crucial ways. I couldn’t help but sneak a glance at Mary, only guessing at what she might be feeling.
But I knew what I was feeling, as I recalled my own dearly departed with gratitude for what I’d shared with them, learned from them and still carried with me, and with hope that I could honor their deaths by cherishing life.
In this election year, our society faces a kind of severe adversity we would have found unfathomable just a decade ago. Our future may seem to rest on the seemingly frail shoulders of a leader pushing 82.
But if an aging rocker, not much younger, can still deliver powerful performances at a uniquely demanding job night after night, it’s not too much to trust that his elder can do it day after day, as he’s done for the past three years. It’s not too much to believe that the same man can triumph in November and beyond.
And just as Bruce reminded the crowd that the success of his concert involved our efforts, the success of the campaign depends on us as well.=
The elation of a Springsteen experience can give way to reflection. I think that I’ve been thinking about the 2024 campaign in the wrong way. It’s not just about beating back those who’d drag us into a dark age for democracy, for women, for America’s role in the world, for so much more.
It’s also about seeing this as a chance to move forward on those fronts and so many more.
It’s not just about fear and anger. It’s about hope and dreams.
Despite the darkness, and with enough drive and dedication, we could be just around the corner from the light of day.
Once more, Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. We recommend you sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.
MORE POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB’S BLOG, A PROMISED LAND:
New views of the local news crisis… Up first, a brand new 538 piece by Joshua Darr. The LSU professor worked with colleagues to show that “less local news meant more polarization” in communities. “Then, with a little luck,” he wrote, “we were also able to study the other side of the coin — whether more local news could actually bring people together.” The answer was yes, at least in Palm Springs, California.
But, Darr wrote, “the market is simply not providing local newspapers the resources they need to deliver the civic benefits they’re capable of, which raises the question as to what extent the government should step in to help.” He flicked at the proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the Senate and pointed out that “even bolder policies have been proposed to help local news, such as giving direct payments to news organizations to hire reporters or offering Americans vouchers to spend on local nonprofit media.”
Local news as civic infrastructure? With Democrats controlling the levers of power in Congress, these ideas will at least get a hearing. Whether they’ll come to fruition is another matter altogether. But Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said earlier this spring that local news, “frayed beyond belief,” should be treated as “critical infrastructure” that “needs to be preserved.”
Billions in funding for local news?! I can hear the bad-faith mockery on Fox News at the same time I type these words. But for a good-faith argument about this, read Steven Waldman‘s recent piece for Poynter: “Why local news should be included in the infrastructure bill…”
>> Related: This NYT guest essay by Sarah Bartlett and Julie Sandorf details how NYC is supporting small news outlets through ad spending commitments…
“National news outlets and social media have gotten a lot of attention for contributing to mistrust and disinformation, but local TV news is no less complicit,” Amanda Ripley wrote in this deep dive for The Atlantic last month. Ripley surveyed some experiments by Scripps‘ local stations to improve TV news and rebuild trust — from “increasing the length and complexity of its segments” to “backing away from crime coverage and other cheap thrills.” There’s a lot to think about here…
“Can local TV news keep politics local?” Matt Grossman of the Niskanen Center posed this question on a recent podcast. Here’s a transcript. Local coverage is “threatened by nationalization,” Grossman said, citing new work by two scholars. In summary: “Daniel Moskowitz finds that local TV news helps citizens learn more about their governors and senators, encouraging split-ticket voting. But Joshua McCrain finds that Sinclair has bought up local stations, increasing coverage of national politics and moving rightward. Local news coverage is in decline but offers one of the major remaining bulwarks against nationalization and polarization.” More here…
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