Dear Mr. President By Pink
By: Kylie Sterr and Brittany Eads
Lyrics
"How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?"
When Pink sings this phrase she's asking George W. Bush how he can do something as little as dreaming, when mother's in America don't even get the right to say their last words to someone they love. This lyric is referring to the Iraq and Afghanistan war where many soldiers had lost their lives, and numerous mothers grieved because of it.
"How can you say no child is left behind? We're not dumb and we're not blind."
When Pink sings this phrase she's asking George W. Bush how he could tell the public that every child will get the same opportunity as the next, but lie straight to their face. This lyric is referring to George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which was formed to fix the failing education system in America, but nothing has changed.
"Let me tell you 'bout hard work, building a bed out of a cardboard box, let me tell you 'bout hard work."
When Pink sings this phrase she's telling George W. Bush that he needs to reevaluate what he deems "hard work" to be. This lyric is referring to the poverty and homelessness that was and is still littering America. It's also stating that people who are in the lower to poverty class, have to work ten times harder to achieve a roof over their head than a upper to middle class American would.
Artist
Pink
Pink came up with the song as an open letter to the president addressing all of the major flaws in America that she believed George W. Bush wasn't correcting. Although nothing happened in Pink's personal live to give her the motivation to write this song, she wrote it because she wanted America to realize that the smaller issues have the greatest impact.
Issue
Overall Message
The overall message that is presented in "Dear Mr. President", is that George W. Bush sees all of these issues going on in America; homelessness, poverty, and the Iraq and Afghanistan war and doesn't seem to care enough to fix them. We agree with the overall issue because it shows that even the person that sees every move someone makes, can still be completely oblivious to what's in front of them. We feel the song made a significant impact on the era because since the song was written in 2006, it made America feel that Pink was singing about issues that were very recent, which made Americans open up their minds to what was really going on in the world they live in.