In the troubled days after 9/11 pop icon and New Jersey native found himself in a park in North Jersey looking across at Manhattan, pondering what had occurred.
As the Jersey native tells the story, he encountered a man who told 'The Boss,' "We need you now."
The result was "The Rising," an album about loss, recovery, and the struggle to go forward in a changed world.
Today I call for a new "Rising."
I call for us - myself included - to rise above the crude, coarse, too often vulgar status of our national conversation.
A few things first.
The restaurant owner in Lexington, Va., who politely asked White House press spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sandersto leave her eatery because she disagreed with "an inhumane and unethical administration" was wrong.
That does not mean she did not have the right to do so. I just happen to believe she was wrong.
As was Huckabee Sanders, who of course took to her boss' favorite form of communication, jumping on Twitter to announce that the woman's actions "say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so."
This was not her calling a friend and relaying what happened. This was the White House press spokesperson announcing it to the world. That's part of how we communicate these days. We no longer whisper in each other's ears. We now shout it for the universe to hear. The result was about what you might expect.
It was not the first time a member of the Trump Administration found themselves suddenly under public attack, all stemming from the Trump team's hard line on immigration, including separating the children of parents attempting to enter the country illegally from their mothers and fathers.
White House aide was accosted in a D.C. restaurant by a patron shouting that he was a "real-life fascist." Of course it was a Mexican restaurant.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen got similar treatment in another capital eatery, where her fellow diners let her have it with chats of "End the family separation" and "If kids don't eat in peace, you don't eat in peace."
The debate since these incidents has focused on how best to register opposition to the president's policies. Many people seem to think that the time for civility has passed, that we now must be more strident in making our voices known.
I guess you can count California Congresswoman Maxine Waters among them. She encouraged a public gathering to do just that, to harass administration and Trump Cabinet officials when they encounter them in public.
Do not count me among them.
I fear for where all this is going.
Of course, everyone is taking their lead from the commander-in-chief. And of course the president remained nothing if not consistent, responding to the incident involving Huckabee Sanders about the way you might expect.
The president - again let me repeat that, the president of the United States - went on Twitter and excoriated the restaurant for their actions.
Of course, he had to add a dash of classic Trump, castigating the Virginia eatery for its cleanliness.
Trump suggested the Red Hen "should focus on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
"I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside."
Well, I guess now that he's resolved the North Korean crisis, the president is fixing his attention on the problem of cleanliness in local restaurants.
He also once again shared his opinion of Waters, repeating an earlier below-the-belt assault on her intellect, referring to her as a "very low IQ individual." Actually, maybe that would be better described as a below-the-Beltway diatribe.
All of this is merely gasoline on the conflagration that has become our national political discourse.
The Left now defends these public attacks on administration officials as the result of frustration with the president's policies. The Right defends the president, saying he was simply standing up for his employees and those who agree with his stance.
Language is something I am somewhat familiar with. Donald Trump uses language in a way the nation has not encountered before from the man who holds the position as the most powerful person on the planet. Sure, all presidents have had their moments. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon could get more than a little salty in their pitched political battles and the skirmishes they had daily with foes.
But for the most part, those were private moments, they were not shared with the rest of the world.
And that is the heart of the problem. Yes, it is the words that are troublesome. But it is the way they are shared that turns these instances from a private dispute into national headlines.
We no longer talk about issues civilly. We instead jump on social media and appeal to our base - on both the right and the left. Do I need to remind anyone of Michelle Wolf and Samantha Bee?
This is the ugly soundtrack that now will form the backdrop of the 2018 midterm elections. Don't believe it? Did you catch any of the president's speech in South Carolina Monday night? It was attack, attack, attack. No one - and nothing - was out of bounds. Waters, Democrats, even late-night TV hosts were savaged by the president.
Now the Left has decided to join Trump in the swamp. They have seen his tactics, and, at least for some, have undergone an epiphany. They realized they work, at least in energizing your base. So now the flames are being fanned on both sides.
Remember when the goal was draining the swamp?
Today we are drowning in a swamp of incivility. Don't expect it to get better anytime soon.
Maybe it's time for the Boss to save us once again.
Can we come on up for another Rising, ascending from the muck of our current political discourse?
I have my doubts.
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