They Should Be Saying Booooo

I very much enjoyed the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame 25th Anniversary Concert. Of course, it's always been questionable that rock and roll is meant for a museum, and now the museum itself is an august institution.

Ah well, let's just enjoy the music. And mostly I did, with an amazing group of performers (to mention but a few, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, CSN and Simon and Garfunkel) doing many classic songs--their own and covers.

There was just one moment I found annoying. (So of course, that's what I'm blogging about.) Springsteen, as he so often does these days, went off on a Woody Guthrie-like populist rant. Among the things he railed against: Wall Street and its high-living ways.

This is what I hate about populism. It appeals to the worst in us, picking a group to blame for our problems and asking for Two Minutes Hate. Wall Street was certainly part of the problem (though if you want to blame them alone, will you give them credit for the prosperous years before the crash?), but the whole story is obviously about much more.

But even worse, to single out their high-living ways for resentment? Who cares? Or let me put it another way. I'm guessing that just about everyone on Wall Street wishes they could live like Bruce Springsteen.