Come On Up for the

Come On Up for the Rising - I've posted my review of Springsteen's latest album.

I've been marinading my brain in this record for the past six days. It may be his best ever.

You be the judge.

Media Bias Watch, Part X - Time Magazine is apparently going to move a story echoing Bill Clinton's charge - that President Bush ignored Clinton's plan to deal with Al Quaeda.

In other words: Clinton all but ignores Al Quada for eight years, including four devastating attacks against Americans (the first WTC bombing, the Kenyan Embassy, the Khobar Towers and the USS Cole) - then coughs up a half-assed "plan" at the end of its tenure. The Bush administration doesn't run with the "plan", or otherwise solve the Al Quaeda problem in the eight months between inauguration and September 11 - and it's Bush's fault?

Unmentioned, most likely, is

Conservatives on Bruce - Conservatives have long had a tenuous relationship with the music of Bruce Springsteen. On the one hand, most of it is undeniably great - and, considered over the course of (this fall) 30 years, his output has been almost uniformly superb, commpared with how most of his contemporaries have drifted into complete irrelevance, mostly before Ronald Reagan was even elected to office.

But the contradiction is there - on the one hand, his political sympathies, while rarely overtly expressed, are generally populist, a movement of which conservatism is rightly suspicious. On the other hand, the themes of which he sings - faith, hope, family, love - are things near and dear to the conservative heart.

And he's undeniably a cultural phenomenon - even today, 18 years after his commercial peak. So we write about him and his music. Even hack bloggers like me try it (see top of page).

Some don't get it.

Some do.