Bruce Springsteen’s Anti-American Anthem

Honoring the Rust Belt’s greatest sellout — and elitist suck-up.It was July 1984, a very late weeknight. My buddy Mike and I closed up Perkins Restaurant in Butler, Pennsylvania, and left about 1 a.m. with a six-pack of Budweiser pounders for the old Kaufman’s department store in downtown Pittsburgh. There we joined a long line of fellow 1980s degenerates sleeping out all night on the sidewalk in quest of coveted Bruce Springsteen concert tickets.Perkins is a nice family restaurant chain. The restaurant where Mike and I worked — he as a junior manager and I as cook, dishwasher, and all-purpose...