Okay, somebody at CNN has a good sense of humor. When cutting to commercial from their convention coverage, they played “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. For those unfamiliar with the song, here’s some lyrics :

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays “Hail to the chief”,
they point the cannon right at you.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me.
I ain’t no senator’s son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me.
I ain’t no fortunate one.

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord don’t they help themselves.
But when the tax man comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me.
I ain’t no millionaire’s son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me.
I ain’t no fortunate one.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war.
And when you ask them, “How much should we give?”
They only answer “More! More! More!”

Too bad that viewpoint isn’t shared by the people actually commenting on the convention. So far, I have yet to hear anyone describe the proceedings derisively as “overly scripted”.

Nevertheless, the choice of CCR by some anonymous person in the control room is a pretty apt one. Here’s some more background on the song from an interview a few years ago :

John Fogerty : Nowadays [’Fortunate Son’] works really great . . . It’s a really cool rock & roll song. It’s really fun to sing, it’s fun for the band to play, it all really works as rock & roll the same way that ‘Jailhouse Rock’ worked or ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ . . . But . . . it was born out of a lot of anger and resentment and almost primal rage at the situation which had repeated itself in the ’60s that’s been going on since two guys got together and decided to be an army and the one guy said, ‘Well, I’m more privileged than you, so you go fight, and I’ll stay home’ . . . I was really outraged because this was guys my age. I had already been in and out of the Army myself, the Army Reserve, and for the exact same cause that people were going over for now. And I focused pretty severely on Richard Nixon’s kids and Eisenhower’s kids and some others who were either not going to serve or they were going to serve in some showbiz capacity. It just really made me mad and I always thought, ‘Why don’t they send all the gray-haired senators over to fight and leave us home? We’ll race our cars up and down the street or something.’

Does this remind you of anyone we know?