Opinion

MEET THE NEW BOSS

Bruce Springsteen is a man who reaches across the political divide and across the eras, a guy who howls the truth with his electric despair, his stadium-filling voids, his catchy alienation. Nothing is more exciting than spending 45 minutes crawling into and out of the Meadowlands parking snarl to hear Bruce sing about bustin’ loose on the open road.

Right now, though, the streets aren’t burning. The night isn’t lonely. It isn’t some infested summer in a dead man’s town with nothing but boring stories of glory days. A bright new day is percolating across the land. What will Bruce do for material? From now on, as Springsteen foretold when he campaigned for Obama in Cleveland on Nov. 2, there will be, “economic and social justice, America as a positive influence around the world.” And the new president is finally going to fulfill “the right of every American to a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, to a life filled with the dignity of work, promise, and the sanctity of home.” So: 100% employment and 0% substandard schools? Sounds good for the country but alarming for Springsteen fans.

There is a bracing consistency in Springsteenian gloom, from the Ford years (“The street’s on fire, a real death waltz”) to Carter’s (“Lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy”) to Reagan’s (“This old world is rough, it’s just getting rougher”) to the first Bush’s (“Ain’t no mercy on the streets of this town, ain’t no bread from heavenly skies”) to Clinton’s (“Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin’ away on the streets of Philadelphia?”) to the second Bush’s (“Woke up Election Day, skies gunpowder and shades of gray”). If the Boss has a motto, it has always been this: No hope, no change, no way.

What’s his next song going to be called – “Goodlands”? Will universal pre-K childcare give us “Junglegymland?” I for one am not looking forward to “Tenth Avenue Love-In,” “Happy Heart” or “57 Channels (and a Lot of It Is Really Interesting Interviews with Cabinet Members About How They’re Going to Improve Everyone’s Job, School, and Personal Dignity).” Instead of looking for inspiration to John Steinbeck to make “Ghost of Tom Joad” or to Pete Seeger for covers of one of the old let’s-make-a-union-that’ll-one-day-destroy-the-car-industry songs, could Bruce take a Lauperian turn and surmise that we’re all just “Born to Have Fun”? All of these fears were realized on Monday, when Springsteen released his new single, “Working on a Dream.” The first line: “Out here the nights are long, the days are lonely. I think of you – I’m working on a dream!”

There isn’t a lot of doubt about who that “you” is. Springsteen hasn’t written a lot of love songs about Patti Scialfa, and now that they’ve been married for 17 years, they might be working on not finishing each other’s sentences, they might be working on home maintenance and domestic staffing issues, but they’re pretty far past working on a dream.

Springsteen debuted the song at an Obama event, and he’s releasing the new album of the same title on Jan. 27, exactly a week after the Obama inauguration.

The song goes on, “My hands are rough from . . . workin’ on a dream!” Springsteen used to need escape, freedom, catharsis. Now he needs a bottle of Jergens lotion.

Then comes the really twisted part: “Tweet-tweet-tweet-tuh-tweet-tweet-tweet!” Bruce Springsteen whistles? It’s as if Sylvester Stallone took up tap dancing or Andy Rooney suddenly became funny.

Has Springsteen ever whistled before? “Nothing’s coming to mind,” says Chris Phillips, the editor of the fansite Backstreets.com. “There are shouts and moans and howls and falsettos. All sorts of vocal tricks, but I can’t thing of any recordings where he’s whistled.”

If Bruce is channeling the theme from “The Andy Griffith Show,” there’s no telling what might happen next. There could be an Iraq war movie in which George Clooney plays a US colonel who helps liberate a country from an evil dictator. Sean Penn could play a CIA agent who devises a way to save thousands of lives using domestic surveillance and rendition of suspects.

But my fellow Americans, it will be a dark moment in our nation’s history if Bruce Springsteen turns into Ned Flanders. I’m dreading the next time he sings the lyrics to “Atlantic City” and changes the chorus to, “Everything die-diddly-dies, and that’s a factoroonie!”

Kyle.Smith@nypost.com