Bon Jovi is using the occasion of his latest tour to promote [1] volunteerism, and is apparently playing this video at each of his concerts:
I think it’s obvious that anyone who would willingly attend a Bon Jovi concert is in desperate need of direction as to how to spend his free time, but that video is liable to confuse Mr. Jovi’s fans. For one thing, Mr. Jovi begins his lecture by stating that he is “a big believer in the power of ‘we,'” and then states “the reality is, we’re all in this together.” Okay, I get that. But the song playing underneath all this is “Living on a Prayer,” featuring the line “We’ve gotta hold on to what we’ve got.”
Doesn’t that undercut Mr. Jovi’s message of sharing? Given the current state of the economy, all I’ve got is time. And I’m holding on to it.
(Aside: If you’re so concerned about how people spend their free time, Mr. Jovi, why did you sell your song “Living on a Prayer” to the Rock Band [2] video game? Do you know how much time I’ve spent playing that game — and not volunteering?)
But Mr. Jovi’s message gets even more muddled, when he starts singing another song that I hadn’t heard of before (I admit I haven’t kept up with Mr. Jovi’s career the way I maybe should have — full disclosure: when I was in junior high school, a boy much larger than I made fun of me by creating his own lyrics to the song “You Give Love a Bad Name” that suggested I was homosexual*, and I have never liked Mr. Jovi’s music), the lyrics of which include the line, “We weren’t born to follow” (this is apparently the title [3] of the song).
Isn’t Mr. Jovi suggesting that people follow? Specifically, that they follow his and the government’s ideas about “volunteering,” and “giving back”?
For crying out loud, isn’t it enough that I stay off welfare and unemployment? Isn’t it enough that I have my own health insurance? Now I’ve got to go and help some people hammer nails into buildings (a practice for which I am profoundly ill-suited, just ask anyone who used to ask me for help with things like that).
I hope that the people in my community do well, and are successful. But I’m a little confused as to why Mr. Jovi is also so concerned about my community. Maybe he should concentrate on creating songs that can’t be rewritten in such a way as to belittle a dreamy kid who’s maybe a little skinnier than most and yeah he reads comic books and French poetry and does gymnastics but that doesn’t make him gay.
Seriously, Mr. Jovi. We weren’t born to follow you.
*The bully’s lyrics, which are offensive and most definitely do not reflect language that I have ever used:
“Shot to the dick,
and he’s to blame,
You give fags
a bad name.”
No, it doesn’t make any rational sense, but his objective was to hurt, not to compose something sensible.
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Ricky Sprague [6]
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