ROCKIN’ ROUND THE FLAG

Is it too late to reschedule the Bicentennial? Now that rock ‘n’ rollers finally are getting into the American spirit en masse, about a decade too late, the MTV channel is starting to look more like something that could be called the USA Network.

This “New Patriotism” takes many forms. There’s Jackson Browne singing that he wished these United States were in the right (“For America”), and then there’s the America-right-or-wrong flavor of novelties like the collaboration between wrestling heavyweight Hulk Hogan and rock lightweight Rick Derringer (“Real American”). Neither vision of the red, white and blue way is very compelling, unfortunately--at least not in the video translation.

There is something uniquely American, though, in the fact that the bottom of this barrel of current video clips is scraped by a bad actor taking on a new career. Ratings are based on a scale of 0-100.

Cathode rays guaranteed to induce alpha waves:

Jackson Browne’s “For America.” Directors: Leslie Libman and Larry Williams. If we were handing out points for right-mindedness, Browne’s sober message--about maintaining love of one’s country while measuring its policies, foreign and otherwise, with a grain of salt--might be tops. But the music’s lack of urgency only is compounded by the disappointingly literal visual scheme: an endless array of stock photos of what’s right and wrong about the U.S. A song this earnest and deadpan cries out for treatment more imaginative than tactics like trotting out the same old shots of Vietnam to produce the desired Pavlovian response. 45