Leon Wieseltier raises a cry of protest against the adulation of Bruce Springsteen that has recently engulfed the commentariat:
Springsteen worship is a cry against the clock. But rock n roll has played also another role in American life, which is to prove that Herbert Marcuse was right. There will be no revolution in America. This society will contain its contradictions without resolving them; it will absorb opposition and reward it; it will transform dissent into culture and commerce. Marcuse’s mistake was in believing that this is bad news. It is good news, because we will be spared the agonies of political purifications. But it is also comic, as protest songs become entertainment for the rich, and Bruce Springsteen the idol of the elite. The New Yorker clinches it: he is the least dangerous man in America. “With all the unrest in the world,” as Tony Curtis once said to Marilyn Monroe, “I don’t think anyone should have a yacht that sleeps more than twelve.”
Those Springsteen worshipping writers, by the way, are the Atlantic ‘s Jeffrey Goldberg , the Times’ David Brooks , and, most verbosely, the New Yorker ‘s David Remnick .
