This past Saturday saw another "No Kings" rally - that is to say, the lavishly funded organization that rallies against a democratically elected president in favor of a woman who promised to institute censorship, a running mate who held emergency power for a year and a half for a three month emergency who ran a snitch line and runs a thoughtcrime database, and which calls itself something else in countries that actually do have kings so as not to offend actual aristocrats - in Saint Paul.
Yawn. The left seems to be trying to turn the Saint Paul Capitol Mall into Berkeley. I can always tell there's a big rally going on because I see middle-class suburban white women standing at the light rail station on a Saturday morning after parking in the Target parking lot - something that only occurs when they are traveling in packs, bearing preprinted signs.
Now, I've half-joked in the past that "No Kings" is a bunch of retreaded hippies reliving their (foreshadowing here) glory days. And we know this is true, because the rally trotted out a bunch of retreaded hippies: "Hanoi" Jane Fonda (kids, ask your grandparents - and if grandpa served in Vietnam, cover your ears) and Joan Baez (kids, she was the folk-singer ex-girlfriend that flipped off Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown"; your parents might. know her as the woman who butchered "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down") and Bernie Sanders, all of whom were doing the exact same thing at the exact same kind of rally, 50 (checks calendar) no, 55 years ago.
And, of course, a pivotal, epochal music star to lend some crowd appeal...
"Bowser" from "Sha Na Na":
I am going to Minneapolis because I had a major hand in Bruce Springsteen appearing at the flagship event there for No Kings 3.
— Jon “Bowzer” Bauman (@JonBowzerBauman) March 25, 2026
Our ActTV produces & livestreams The People’s View at these flagship events. Social Security Works is a steering committee partner.
Just kidding. Nobody under 60 has ever heard of Sha-na-na or Bowzer Bauman. But Bowzer tipped my hand. Bruce is going to be/was here.
Bruce Springsteen has been added to a star-studded lineup, joining major political figures, for the No Kings rally at the Minnesota State Capitol on Saturday, March 28. https://t.co/pjNEvfJyq4
— FOX 9 (@FOX9) March 24, 2026
"Star-studded" is doing a lot of lifting there, isn't it? Springsteen, at 76 years old, is the youngest headliner on the bill, and it's not particularly close.
This is the awkward moment when I tell a conservative audience that I'm a die-hard Springsteen fan. Darkness on the Edge of Town is my favorite album in the history of rock and roll, with The River, Nebraska, and Born to Run snorting at its heels. I spent the best nights of my teens and twenties howling along to "Jungleland", jamming the pedal to the floor when "Born to Run" came on the radio, nodding and agreeing that it actually aln't no sin to be glad you're alive at moments good and awful, great and small. Seeing Springsteen on the second night of the "Born in the USA" tour in Saint Paul, just down the road from last Saturday's/today's rally, was one of the turning point moments in my life, and that was after I became a conservative.
No need to respond. I've heard it all already.
"But he's a liberal, and getting worse all the time!". It's true. No doubt about it. Tomorrow's/yesterdays/today's show at the "No Kings" rally, and the national tour he's planning around the subject, But in his heyday (from 1975's Born to Run through 1987's Tunnel of Love, and a quick return in 2002's The Rising), he wrote a lot of music that appealed to a lot of cultural conservatives, and plenty of political ones; I wrote a 12 part series on the subject back in 2013.
"He's become an insufferable moneygrubbing limo liberal" - Yep. So bad that his fanzine of 41 years, "Backstreets", closed down out of disgust for his caving in to Live Nation's predatory ticket prices. All true.
And no, lefties, I haven't forgotten your old warhorse: "Ack-shyu-ally, Born in the USA was critical of America". We got it. And back in the day, we really didn't care: there's a solid case to be made that the song helped Reagan win re-election. The fact that Springsteen has spent the last 40-plus years trying to steal the song back from us conservatives, playing it as a tortured delta blues song instead of as the skirling anthem that pushed all of us cool rockin' (eventual) daddies over the speed limit back in the '80s, should tell you we've got a point.
As I've told more than a few conservative friends, I care about a singer's politics about as much as I care about politicians' taste in music.
But Bruce hasn't had a truly great album in almost a quarter-century. I've passed on most of his tours since we - we - lost Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici.
But at this particular event - Hollywood limo liberals and socialists rallying a crowd of white, middle-class, largely superannuated progressives against an elected president doing the things an elected president does, along with a stage full of "stars" who were last on the cultural radar when they were selling workout tapes during Reagan's second term?
Or to put it another way - a few tens of thousands of wannabe hippies sitting back, trying to remember a little of the glory of...as time slips away, leaving them with nothing, ladies and gentlemen, but boring stories of...
...well, you know where this is going.
Missed the show, Bruce. We'll always have Darkness on the Edge of Town.
