To the Editor:

Re “What the Rally Playlists Say About the Candidates” (news graphic, Aug. 21) :

The Bruce Springsteen song “We Take Care of Our Own” is in no way an “ Obamacare anthem .” Though it was played at Barack Obama’s re-election rallies, it was recorded in 2011 in part as a rebuke to George W. Bush’s inaction during Hu rricane Katrina :

From Chicago to New Orleans

From the muscle to the bone

From the shotgun shack to the Superdome

There ain’t no help the cavalry’s stayed home

There ain’t no one hearing the bugle blown

We take care of our own.

The song’s message is not that Americans take care of one another, but that we should — and don’t. Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, both of whom, you write, use the song at rallies, would be well advised to cull it from their playlists!

They aren’t the first politicians to misread Springsteen. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s handlers made a similar mistake when they tried to appropriate his antiwar anthem “Born in the U.S.A.” as a right-wing battle cry — a reading the songwriter himself publicly balked at.

On the surface, Springsteen’s songs can sound like uncomplicated rallying cries, but what elevates them is their veiled ironies — the way they often reflect a deep ambivalence about the American values they appear to celebrate.