We all want to live in a land of hopes and dreams where faith is rewarded, and there’s plenty of cold beer at a reasonable price. The problem is the reality of this hard land.
Video of an interview of Bruce Springsteen by Tom Hanks from the Tribeca Film Festival was recently posted. It featured Springsteen talking about how he didn’t pay any income taxes on his fortune until after he was famous, and the Fed’s came looking for him. By then Springsteen’s third album Born to Run, had peaked at number 3 on the Billboard charts and he had made the covers of both Time and Newsweek – quite a feat for a musician in 1975.
A musician in tax trouble isn’t exactly murder incorporated, but the capital case here is one of hypocrisy. Springsteen goes out of his way all the time to advocate for higher taxes. A big government Democrat, he campaigned for Hillary, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Clinton. However, when he was rich, he paid no taxes until he was held up with a gun – a gun in the hands of the IRS. Absent from his thinking is any sense of irony, any trace of self-awareness about how his actions and statements are so contradictory.
One would hope such a rendezvous with the agency would have initiated some resistance. Springsteen knows the price you pay when you’re point blank at the government’s mercy. That he persists in such behavior should yield one result; he should be mocked. Anytime Bruce makes another pronouncement supporting higher taxes and tax and spenders; he should be reminded that we haven’t forgotten his E-Street Shuffle with the tax man.
It’s a sad, funny ending to find yourself pretending
A rich man in a poor man’s shirt
