“I said well, he can use it if he wants to, but you probably ought to write him a letter and say, you know, not only, you know, that you guys are using it, but so is Barack Obama, so is John Edwards, so is Hillary Clinton, and you should understand that Mellencamp is very liberal, and do you really think that it’s pushing your agenda in the right direction?” Mellencamp told Gross that when he heard of McCain’s intentions, he instructed his “publicity guy” to reach out to the senator from Arizona: The song “was always anti-Reaganomics,” Mellencamp told Gross, but that didn’t stop Reagan from using it during his 1984 re-election campaign, or John McCain from attempting to do the same in 2008. (Read David Graham’s great piece about the phenomenon of political campaigns appropriating the work of popular musicians.) It wasn’t long before conservative politicians hijacked the liberal rocker’s poetry, making “Pink Houses” a microcosm of Mellencamp’s career - and, ironically, the creative equivalent of building a pretty pink house only to have someone come along and jam a highway in its front yard. “Ain’t that America,” the chorus’ kumbaya line, aimed to register the cynical disappointment of “ain’t that some bullshit.” Most people simply heard “America,” tuned out the sarcasm, and unfurled the flag. What the artist intended as a folk-pop lesson about class, race, and surviving in America on a steady diet of shit sandwiches, audiences received as a red-white-and-blue, agit- pop anthem. The number is easily among Mellencamp’s best, and remains an FM standard four decades after its release. “My best songs,” Mellencamp told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in 2009, “are just given to me from someplace outside myself.” Rolling Stone considers “Pink Houses” to be one of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, listing it at 447 where it falls between 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” (448) and Salt ‘n Peppa’s “Push It” (446). “Pink Houses,” its best-performing single, peaked at No. Three of its nine songs went on to become Top 20 hits. Mellencamp released Uh-Huh, his seventh studio album and the first in which he had dropped the ill-advised, manager-imposed “Cougar” from his name, in the fall of 1983. I looked down and saw this old man, early in the morning, sitting on the porch of his pink shack with a cat in his arms. It was at a highway interchange in Indianapolis. A black guy was sitting in front of a pink house, and that’s all there was to it. The song was an unlikely MTV staple during the cable cultural giant’s glitzy pubescence, but it was far less flamboyant than the standard video fare. In the 1980s, the singer-songwriter from small-town Seymour, Indiana, visited a stretch of I-65 on Indianapolis’ northwest side and came away with the inspiration for “Pink Houses,” a lunch-pail critique of the American dream.

bzbplAnfqOĮven during the rah-rah Reagan era, Mellencamp didn’t.

Sadly, neither was the Young American Foundation account, which didn’t seem to comprehend basic American history-or at least was happy to ignore it. Predictably, Buttigieg was mocked by conservative politicians and groups, including Young America’s Foundation, which shared a photo of the former South Bend mayor with the money quote from the Grio interview on social media. President Joe Biden has proposed $1.9 trillion in infrastructure spending, including $20 billion for an initiative that would “reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments.” In an interview with The Grio, Buttigieg explained “there is racism physically built into some of our highways,” citing examples of roadway construction that was intentionally routed through existing Black and brown neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. It’s taken 38 years, but White America has finally returned to the interstate running through the Black man’s front yard in John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses.” You remember-the one where “he thinks he’s got it so good.” Turns out he doesn’t, at least according to another Hoosier-former presidential candidate and now U.S.

John mellencamp little pink houses