See. That's exactly what Mellencamp did, and you completely missed my point, as you missed Mellencamp's. And all I did was pose the possibility of writing a Mellencamp-like b^itch-slap song about you and your family to show you how you would be offended then--and you already feel offended. Yet Mellencamp has already written such a song about all of us as a family of Americans (remember the theme here is "One America"). Then the NFL had him sing it in a hundred million homes to smack us around with his little liberal "you hypocritical Jesus freaks and your ex-alcoholic Jesus-freak President are morons" wake up call.
Problem is Mellencamp's song is only a bitch slap if you agree with him. It's easily re-interpreted by anyone that actually understands the war in Iraq as being a condemnation of the Jihadists. That's not what he intended, but if Mellencamp wanted everyone to get his anti-American "message" he should have written a better song. Slimey as he is Barry Manilow excels at making sure there is only one possible interpretation for his songs, that's his specialty, it's why he's so good at commercial jingles; Johnny should take some lessons.
Now why in God's name would the NFL decide to piss off 51% of their viewers?! That would be stupid, they're a corporation and want money, and Thanksgiving weekend is their most viewed non-playoff games, reaching their largest audience. The NFL isn't that stupid, they aren't sending messages, they're putting popular singers on stage for 10 minutes, that's it. They didn't "have" John do anything, other than perform for 10 minutes. Maybe Mellencamp was slapping people, but his song is so poorly written the slap had no effect, until YOU decided that you WANTED to be slapped by a whiney singer with dyed hair. YOU slapped YOURSELF and now you're whining even more than Mellencamp about how badly you've been mistreated. Learn to stop being so angry all the time, it's unbecoming and shortens your life expectancy, 99% of America didn't notice or care what songs he played, didn't pay attention to the lyrics and don't feel slapped about it. Only YOU and the other members of FRs perpetually pissed off club feel slapped, get over it.