Bruce Springsteen is at it again. He’s out there on tour stirring up the Democratic base singing about labor rights and civil rights, faith, perseverence, dignity and American Refugees. Soledad O’Brien doesn’t get why - even when he tells her. Or maybe she’s confused because she can’t figure out why he isn’t in jail. He’s naming names. He’s singing songs like How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live “in honor of President Bush’s visit down there where he managed to gut the only agency through political cronyism that’s supposed to assist American citizens in times like that. So it’s all in a day’s work … these days.”

It seemed the most popular question Springsteen got as he promoted We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions was “Is this a political album?” Here are some of the liner notes from it:

Mrs. McGrath: Strongly associated with the Irish Republicans and the Easter Uprising of 1916, this antiwar ballad was first published in 1815 as a Dublin broadside.

O Mary Don’t You Weep: One of the most important Negro spirituals, adapted by black Penecost churches, the song then made its way into the freedom song repetoire of the civil rights movement.

John Henry: Germinated from a true story of a man versus machine contest, which occurred during the building of Eastern railroads in the late 19th century.

Jacob’s Ladder: A Negro spiritual based on Genesis 28:11-19, Jacob’s prophetic dream of escape from bondage. A new chorus was written by striking textile workers in the 1940s; Pete Seeger created a new chorus.

My Oklahoma Home: Written with her brother Bill by Agnes “Sis” Cunningham, member of the Almanac Singers, union organizer, foudner-editor of Broadside magazine and herself a Dust Bowl refugee.

Eyes on the Prize: A Holiness hymm also known as “Gospel Plow,” “Paul and Silas” and “Hold On.” “Keep your eyes on the prize” in a 1956 rewrite by civil rights activist Alice Wine.

Shenandoah: An American pioneer’s homesick and lovelorn lament, from very early in the country’s history, probably the first two decades of the 19th century.

Pay Me My Money Down: Identified as a sea chanty but actually a protest song of the black stevedores in Georgia and South Carolina ports; unscrupulous ship captains would often try to slip out of the harbor with their workers unpaid.

We Shall Overcome: The most important political protest song of all-time, sung around the world wherever people fight for justice and equality. Originally a Baptist hymm, brought to the labor movement in the 1930’s, popularized among civil rights workers in the 1950s at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

Labor rights and civil rights, faith, perseverence, dignity and American Refugees. Is that political? Not according to the corporate media. “Political” is worrying if the 37% of Americans who still think that BushCo isn’t a miserable failure will feel alienated, not so much by your belief that he is, but by your belief that you have the right to say so. It’s all in a day’s work.

Do yourself a favor and take advantage of AOL’s collaboration with Springsteen. AOL is hosting seventeen live concert videos taped throughout the U.S. leg of the tour and chosen by Bruce. I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be online. Watch them and you’ll get a real appreciation for Springsteen’s greatest of his many gifts, which is his ability to reflect his times. He did it after 9/11 with The Rising, which is as perfect a collection of grief, despair, anger, faith, acceptance and healing that’s ever been. He did it with Devils and Dust, which should be our national anthem now that we’ve embraced the BushCo Doctrine of Eternal War. And he’s done it again post-Katrina, mid-BushCo when we desperately need songs of protest and faith and dignity.

Is that political? God, I hope so.