Shmoop: Born in the USA Songwriting
I never did figure this one out. In 1984, the irony was that Reagan and the right wing embraced it, without ever *reading* or *understanding* the lyrics.
Emblematic, however, of why we called him “Bonzo.” King of tall tales and never a connection to reality ... which, if you recall history at all ... the Reagan Administration is when Presidential press conferences became rare occurrences. The White House got tired of issuing retractions and clarifications. As John Sears (Reagan’s campaign manager) once said, “There is a generation gap between what Reagan thinks he knows about the world and reality. [snip] Reagan has all these old phonograph records in his head, and a lot of them are full of misinformation. We used to talk about getting into his ‘record library’ and throwing some of them out.” Or as a Presidential aide said, “There are some uncomfortable moments, especially with guys like [Pierre] Trudeau, who have complete mastery of their dossiers and can talk about these things off the top of their heads. The President’s not there yet, and my guess is that he won’t ever be.” Every press conference, you could feel the tension rise as Reagan would start winging things, deflecting serious questions with folksy one-liners. The press eventually just settled on treating him as a child.
Well, the ‘child’ understood Bruce as all the other authentic children did ... as a catchy patriotic-sounding chorus.
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