Born in the USA

Okay, I was (not surprisingly) watching the Olympics last night, and as Misty May and Kerri Walsh won the gold medal in Beach Volleyball, the loudspeakers in Greece started playing "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen. And one of my BIGGEST pet peeves was realized again.

Okay, America: get this through your heads. "Born in the USA" is NOT a patriotic song! It's a rather scathing criticism of the USA of the post-Vietnam era. Here are the lyrics:

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up

Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

Got in a little hometown jam
so they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
to go and kill the yellow man

Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "son if it was up to me"
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said "son don't you understand now"

Had a brother at Khe Sahn
fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there he's all gone

He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now

Down in the shadow of penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go

Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a long gone daddy in the U.S.A.

Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A.

So please STOP playing this as a patriotic song! Pick something else!