Bruce Springsteen is worried about the tone people are using against the Obama administration. And all I can wonder is if this is his little attempt at a joke. But sadly, it’s not. He hasn’t seemed very jokey for about a decade or so.

The Telegraph reports:

The American political climate for achieving change is “very, very ugly,” according to Bruce Springsteen, as he launched a staunch defence of Barack Obama.

The 61 year-old rock legend, a high-profile supporter of the US President, railed against critics for their use of the “most extreme language” to describe “the most modest reforms” being introduced by Mr Obama.

Modest reforms, huh?

But this is the height of hypocrisy from Springsteen who levelled some of the fiercest language against Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush.

The Telegraph reported in 2009:

The Born to Run singer said that the US was now “suffering the consequences” of eight years of rule by a “very radical group of people” who had attempted to undermine the country’s democratic values.

Describing President Bush’s period in power as a “nightmare” for most Americans, the songwriter said: “We had a historically blind administration who didn’t take consideration of the past; thousands of thousands of people died, lives were ruined and terrible, terrible things occurred because there was no sense of real history, no sense that the past is living and real.”

In 2008 Springsteen said in Philadelphia that the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina were just two examples of Bush’s “disaster” presidency and destroyed people’s faith in the country.

“I’ve spent 35 years writing about America and its people and the meaning of the American promise — a promise handed down right here in this city,” Springsteen said.

“Our everyday citizens … have justifiably lost faith in its meaning.”

During the Iraq War he wrote an album with lyrics like these:

The kids asleep in the backseat
We’re just countin’ the miles you and me
We don’t measure the blood we’ve drawn anymore
We just stack the bodies outside the door.

Who’ll be the last to die for our mistake
The last to die for our mistake
Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break
Who’ll be the last to die for our mistake?

But we’re the ones completely out of bounds, right? We’re the ones who unjustifiably jumped ugly on Obama, right? For a self described poet he doesn’t seem to have lots of introspection.