Bruce Springsteen: What's Happening at Our Border Is Shocking, Disgraceful, Inhumane and Un-American

By David Remnick, The New Yorker

21 June 18

ne of the pleasures of Bruce Springsteen’s latest phase, as a one-man Broadway solo act, is his self-deprecation, the sheepish allowance that he is, for all his sincerity, at least partly a performance—a projection of the people he loved and knew growing up. He tells their story even while rock stardom and a taste for “the pink Cadillac” has led him to an entirely different material life. Cribbing from his memoir, “Born to Run,” he admits that he has written in the voice of a Jersey working man, yet he’s never really held a job. He sang lonely epics about the Turnpike and the Parkway before he ever bothered to get a driver’s license. The working man’s clothes that he wears onstage are his father’s. His gig on Broadway, he says, is the first real “job” he’s ever had. It’s half joke, half honest admission.

Springsteen has done his Broadway show, a tightly scripted narrative in words and song, a hundred and forty-six times, but, on Tuesday night, shaken by the scenes and sounds and images coming from the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, he briefly abandoned his script. He spoke in the voice of an American outraged, disgusted, bewildered by what is happening in his own country. Standing on a bare stage and under a simple spotlight, he said:

I never believed that people come to my shows, or rock shows, to be told anything. But I do believe that they come to be reminded of things. To be reminded of who they are, at their most joyous, at their deepest, when life feels full. It’s a good place to get in touch with your heart and your spirit. To be amongst the crowd. And to be reminded of who we are and who we can be collectively. Music does those things pretty well sometimes, particularly these days, when some reminding of who we are and who we can be isn’t such a bad thing.

That weekend of the March for Our Lives, we saw those young people in Washington, and citizens all around the world, remind us of what faith in America and real faith in American democracy looks and feels like. It was just encouraging to see all those people out on the street and all that righteous passion in the service of something good. And to see that passion was alive and well and still there at the center of the beating heart of our country.

It was a good day, and a necessary day, because we are seeing things right now on our American borders that are so shockingly and disgracefully inhumane and un-American that it is simply enraging. And we have heard people in high position in the American government blaspheme in the name of God and country that it is a moral thing to assault the children amongst us. May God save our souls.

There’s the beautiful quote by Dr. King that says the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Now, there have been many, many days of recent when you could certainly have an argument over that. But I’ve lived long enough to see that in action and to put some faith in it. But I’ve also lived long enough to know, that arc doesn’t bend on its own. It needs all of us leaning on it, nudging it in the right direction, day after day. You’ve gotta keep, keep leaning. I think it’s important to believe in those words, and to carry yourself, and to act accordingly.

And, with that, Springsteen sang “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Here he is performing it at home: