Fox hosts befuddled by 'Fortunate Son' lyrics, claim Springsteen 'bashes soldiers' on Veteran's Day

Fox News on Wednesday suggested that a song protesting the Vietnam war draft and elitism in Washington was performed by Bruce Springsteen on Veteran's Day because he was "taking shots at the red, white and blue."

During a Tuesday HBO “Concert for Valor” on the National Mall, Springsteen, Zac Brown and Dave Grohl performed Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song “Fortunate Son."

According to songwriter John Fogerty, the song was written to speak "more to the unfairness of class than war itself." It talks about militant patriotism, and how the "senator's son" is able to avoid the Vietnam draft.

"Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes / They send you down to war / And when you ask them, 'How much should we give?' / They only answer, more, more, more," Fogerty's lyrics say. "It ain’t me, it ain’t me / I ain’t no Senator’s son / It ain’t me, it ain’t me / I ain’t no fortunate one."

But the message turned out to be too complex for some conservatives, who interpreted the song to be an insult to veterans.

"Taking shots at the red, white and blue," Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt reported on Wednesday. "People expressing outrage on Twitter, saying the song bashes soldiers going to war."

"Some are going, wait a minute, this is all about the vets, and that particular song was intended to be an anti-war anthem," host Steve Doocy opined. "Is it really appropriate to be performing it in front of so many vets who volunteered to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan?"

"Yeah, you're doing this for an audience of veterans, and it's almost a slap in the face," co-host Anna Kooiman agreed. "These producers should have known their audience, and known what they were getting with people like Bruce Springsteen."

Co-host Clayton Morris, however, was able to grasp the original intent of Fogerty's lyrics.

"I'm sort of torn about it because the song really is about the elites, it's about -- written in the late 1960s, when John Fogerty wrote it, it was really about those politicians who he saw their sons and daughters were not going to go off in fight in a war," Morris explained. "And that the rest of the country was going to have to fight to save the rest of us, and help the rest of us."

But Doocy was still suspicious of Springsteen's motives.

"Well, if they were going to bookend it with that historical context, that would have been great," he argued. "But I don't think they did that. They just sang a song that is deemed by many to be anti-war, anti-draft. And that's rubbed a bunch of people anti-musician now."

Watch the video below from Fox News' Fox & Friends, broadcast Nov. 12, 2014.