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Has Bruce lost touch with his blue collar following?

Yesterday Patti and Bruce tweeted a photo of themselves at the Broadway Play, Hamilton.  They received some tweets from fans requesting that they stay out of politics as they are losing them as fans.

It got me thinking, is this true?  I don't know but if we look at the election demographics and how they voted, the majority of blue collar households and suburban white females voted Republican.  That's a good portion of Bruce's fan base.  Has he lost some of these fans due to his stance and public statements.

What are your thoughts on this?  Has Bruce lost fans due to his public political stance?

These are some of the tweets:

And some fans responded: 

@springsteen @HamiltonMusical stick to music, stay out of politics. You're losing many life long fans

@springsteen @HamiltonMusical you're trying so hard to lose me as a fan Bruce. Stop already.

 

@springsteen @HamiltonMusical Yes but there is a time & place! Audience is attending to watch artistic event not hear a political diatribe

@springsteen @HamiltonMusical It's not free if you have to pay for it

____________________________________

The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

Last edited by Oats
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With nearly a million retweets and nearly 3.5 million likes, it's hard to see Bruce concerned with the relative handful of dissenters. Disc sales, and in some places concert sales, suggest he's been shedding fans since he fired the band. At worst, this is just more of the same trend. At best, it might lead to a thoughtful song or album about the divisions in our country. The likelihood it will stop him from calling things as he sees them - particularly when the dissenting "fans" implicitly agree with the erosion of rights for the poor and minorities that Bruce is speaking against when he gets "political" - are slim. Once again, people failing, after over 40 years, to recognize that Bruce's songs have always been in some sense "political".

Everybody has the right to voice their opinion. Bruce has been on the same side his entire career and pretty publicly at that. If he does shed fans, then they haven't been paying attention to his songs or his concerts or his interviews. Good rock and roll is often political and divisive. 

 

Besides, the more fans bruce loses, the more tickets for me.

When in Hollywood visit Universal Studios
(Ask for Babs)

Part of Bruce's appeal for is that he has always been outspoken about his opinion and polictical. Those who have not realized that by now have not been paying attention.

If he stopped, he'd probably lose just as many fans ...

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The taste of your voice reveals what before was unknown.
Do you ever dream of the world like I do?

I feel like these are related but different questions.

Should he stop speaking out is one, and I guess my thought is — and I know you're not saying otherwise! — a citizen has every right to speak out. What's more, I actually feel like, conventional wisdom aside, at least some celebrities really probably do know more about at least their pet issues than the average person, because their jobs allow them more time and access to study a given issue. Now, maybe they're still dimbulbs so all that time and access doesn't help, or maybe they're so in a bubble that it's completely one-sided nonsense (hello Jenny McCarthy!) But I feel like we all realize Bruce is not that kind of idiot. 

Has he lost touch with his blue collar following? Well...from everything we know of him, no. He still lives near(ish) to where he grew up, and he's still active with the rest of his extended family who, I'm sure, don't have to worry about losing their houses, thanks to him, but who are apparently largely the same kind of blue collar workers they would have bee had he not become The Boss. What's more, we know from various leaks that he and Patti and the kids frequent the same kinds of establishments that they would have, again, had he not become The Boss. So I think he's as in touch with his blue collar roots as he could possibly be. BUT. A big thing to remember is that those blue collar workers...well, a lot of them had racist leanings back when he was a kid, and they still do. And he rejected them back then and he still does today. So was he not in touch with his fans back in 1971, when they were that way and he wasn't? 

As to losing fans, sure, I'm sure he has. I also suspect his great-grandchildren will never have to work a day in their lives, he's got so much money, so while I suspect he doesn't want to lose fans, 'cuz he's got stuff he wants to say and that he thinks is worth listening to, I again suspect that he thinks it's a worthy risk. 

At the end of the day, what's he's doing and saying now isn't actually all the different from what he was doing and saying back in the early 80s, when he was fighting for Vietnam Vets. It's just that the average skin tone of the people he's talking about is now quite a bit darker than it was then, and the sad fact is that that's a lot of the problem with how it's being received. 

So. There you go. All my absolutely unsupported suppositions.  

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