Inspiration is where you find it...

If you're looking out at autumnal cornfields, waving in their rows in a strong wind... you're still permitted to call to mind beautiful "amber waves of grain" if it so strikes you.

You still get to access America's rich cultural legacy. If that's what you see, and that's how you relate it, you still get to do that. Stir that patriotic feeling. Take the song lyrics, and apply them to what's around you.

Nevermind having to retrace the writer's original paths, to properly interpret what exactly she saw to feel what it was she was expressing in her art. How ... limited.

Is corn a grain? Is tomato a fruit? Does it matter when we're talking the subjective internal interpretation of a song easily accessible to all Americans, even those perhaps without the proper background, technical analysis?

Is there some mandate I missed?

Not in this America. But maybe in the one the imposing liberals in their know-it-all, we think better attitudes have planned for us, eh? (Don't talk to me unless you've read the definitive book! I'm right and you're wrong., binary-kinda thinking. ;-)


* ASIDE: Isn't it rather sad that modern "political analysis" has fallen to this? Quibbling over the song choices, and "ownership", of campaign songs and cultural references?

I wonder when they'll ask this one?:
"Candidate: with much of America experiencing, or talking about, the risks and benefits of the emerging Fracking Industry, do you believe this will bring down the price at the pumps that many Americans believe is a contributing reason in recent years to crippling the economy?"

Follow up: "Will those benefits trickle down to the American car-driving consumers? Affect the prices at the pump, or just be absorbed into the profits of the multi-national oil companies?"

Another topic:
"Candidate: do you think -- whether or not the Court strikes down the mandate guaranteeing plenty of "good" customers (ie/paying in more than they'll get out) into the insurance companies' hands -- that insurance premiums will be LOWER in coming years, or that the insurance companies will simply absorb the profits themselves and see them continue to go up, year after year.

Remember -- they are in a for-profit business, suddenly with a forced consumer base whose choices have legally been taken away. What role, if any, do you see the government taking in coming years to make sure insurance companies price policies fairly?" (pause for laughter...)

Or should the suckers simply be being buying stock themselves, watching the lobbying dollars go to both of your parties and understanding insurance consumers will continue to be the big losers, with no choice of opting out and using their valuable dollars elsewhere?"