This Joe Biden / Bruce Springsteen 'The Rising' Ad Makes YOU Cry, Not Us, Shut Up F*ck You

Stupid onion ninjas.

About 20 minutes into the first night of the Democratic National Convention last night, a new video for Joe Biden aired, featuring Bruce Springsteen's 2002 song "The Rising," that remarkable anthem for 9/11 that doesn't include any calls for kicking ass, getting revenge, or otherwise piling up bodies, because quite enough had been piled up already. It's an apt choice, given that we're now scores of 9/11s into the coronavirus pandemic and one party's response has amounted only to "it is what it is."

Just look at this thing. It's beautiful and moving and I only cried a few quarts while writing it up.

Rise Up at the Democratic Convention | Joe Biden For President 2020    youtu.be 

The video begins with scenes of an empty, sheltered-in place America: deserted streets, an empty stadium, an ambulance. Then a mercifully brief montage of some of the worst of the Trump era: Charlottesville, the Great Man tossing paper towels to hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico, tear gas canisters exploding, kids in cages, the bastard holding up a Bible after police attacked protesters.

Then, with the first refrain of "Come on up for the rising," the mood changes. Health care workers glove up, people go out to protest. "Left the house this morning" and a little kid in a superhero cape skips down a sidewalk, followed by unsubtle-but-you-don't care jump cut to shots of healthcare workers heading to work, being applauded by firefighters, and then seas of people protesting — mostly for Black Lives, but there are also shots of one of the teacher strikes at a statehouse, with everyone in red, and of the fantastic Teens protesting for their lives after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

And then the faces. That's what did it for me; that beautiful spectrum of American faces against a plain cloth backdrop, a reminder that the Unum isn't work a lick of good without the E Pluribus . The scenes of people waving to their families behind glass got us, too. We agreed in the chatcave we could do without the shots of the Black protester hugging the riot cop, because that's such dishonest window dressing, but otherwise, it's one hell of an ad, down to Joe Biden's "hope over fear, truth over lies, unity over division" message at the end.

And it's your Open Thread!

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