Was the music for Saturday’s military parade in Washington, D.C. covertly programmed by the “No Kings” movement?
That’s the question some were asking on social media after the event, spearheaded by President Donald J. Trump, which featured the repeated playing of Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s classic “Fortunate Son” — a song that virtually the entire world knows by now was written during the Vietnam era as a slam against wealthy draft dodgers. The assumption being made by at least a few tweeters was that this had to be some kind of deliberate trolling of the president by someone on the music selection team who just has it in for him. Because if you were going to make a top 10 list of songs that Trump should not want to have played at any of his events — but most of all not at a military-themed ceremony — “Fortunate Son” would certainly be No. 1.
In 2020, in fact, no less a figure than the song’s author, John Fogerty (a military veteran), directly made the connection between Trump and the rich kids who got out of the draft that he was writing about back in the day. “It seems like he is probably the Fortunate Son,” Fogerty said at the time. There could hardly be a worse insult.
So it’s tantalizing to entertain the thought that someone from the left infiltrated the ranks of the president’s music department to include the Creedence song as part of a parade in which active-duty members of the armed forces marched past the figure who has sometimes been chided as “President Bone Spurs,” in honor of the medical deferment that got Trump out of the draft. (He said in 2016 that the condition made it difficult for him to walk at the time he submitted his doctor’s note, but “over a period of time, it healed up.”)
Programming this as a near-subliminal diss would not quite count as a covert operation on the level of Ukraine sneaking hundreds of drones into Russia for a coordinated attack… but close enough.
But “inside jobs” can also be accomplished through sheer cluelessness, and bumbling self-sabotage is probably the easiest explanation for the jaw-dropper of a music synch here. After all, there is a long history of Trump’s campaigns and administrations using “Fortunate Son” — mostly before Fogerty made headlines five years ago saying he wrote it as a slam against people like Trump, but also since. Either Trump’s music people stuck their fingers in their ears as people pointed out that use of the Creedence song just created fresh opportunities for the world to be reminded that he was able to avoid military service… or else they have just soldiered on with it — so to speak — in a “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” sort of way, imagining that they could bring everyone around to thinking that the song will just have positive connotations from here on out.
Fogerty made it clear enough when he made his statement about Trump’s use of “Fortunate Son” in 2020: “Recently, the president has been using my song ‘Fortunate Son’ for his political rallies, which I find confounding, to say the least. So I thought I’d explain a little bit about what ‘Fortunate Son’ is about.” He explained that he “wrote the song back in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War. By the time I wrote the song, I already had been drafted and had served in the military, and I’ve been a lifelong supporter of our guys and gals in the military, probably because of that experience, of course. Anyway, back in those days we still had a draft. And something I was very upset about was the fact that people of privilege — in other words, rich people, or people that had position — could use that to avoid the draft and not be taken into the military. I found it very upsetting that such a thing could occur, and that’s why I wrote ‘Fortunate Son.’ That’s really what the whole intent of the song (was).”
Fogerty continued, “The very first lines of ‘Fortunate Son’ are: ‘Some folks are born made to wave the flag, oooh, they’re red white and blue / But when the band plays “Hail to the Chief,” they point the cannon at you.’ Well, that’s exactly what happened recently in Lafayette Park when the president decided to take a walk across the park. He cleared out the area using federal troops so that he could stand in front of St. John’s Church with a Bible.” He concluded: “It’s a song I could have written now. So I find it confusing, I would say, that the president has chosen to use my song for his political rallies, when in fact it seems like he is probably the Fortunate Son.”
The keepers of the parade doubled down on “Fortunate Son” as part of Saturday’s festivities. First, it was heard in an instrumental version as the soldiers marched, and later, a vocal rendition was heard coming from the stage in video shot at the landing spot for the event.
If it seems that Trump’s people have been impervious to complaints about their use of music, what was heard Saturday indicates that they have been reactive to anything that might land them legally in hot water. The versions of “Fortunate Son” and other songs at the parade were cover versions — live or re-recorded — that avoid running afoul of not having procured a license to use the original master recordings. This was the case at the GOP convention last summer, as well, where, at last, no one had to wonder why “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was being used without permission again, and why.
But as for why Trump’s circle would deliberately want to use even a cover version of a song that virtually shouts, “Hey, remember a long time ago when there were people saying the president was a privileged chicken? Can we start that up again?”…
At the very least, it is the best possible illustration we’ve yet had of the =death of irony. Or, at most, the Trump team has a sleeper cell in their employ, setting him up. If that’s too high a level of intrigue to be true, we can probably just assume that this points to everyone involved with this bone-spurred — sorry, bone-headed — move falling into a category of artistic appreciation best summed up by the late Leonard Cohen:You don’t really care for music, do ya?
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