Rocker John Mellencamp and I have one thing in common. Well, make that two, because we’re both short. But both of us are also natives of Indiana.

However, that’s pretty much where it ends, since Mellencamp is a progressive Koolaid drinker. And as for me? Not so much.

Mellencamp demonstrated his love for Everything Left in a recent appearance on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, when he performed a new song touting Black Lives Matter. At the end he sank to one knee, his fist pumping into the air. It’s because it’s Super Bowl weekend, you see, and it’s a good time to trot out that old trope.

Dude, that’s so. . . last year!

I wonder if the rock n’ roll Bard of the Heartland, who loves to advertise his Hoosier roots and residency, cares a whit about the black lives living in the squalor of Gary, Indiana?

Gary is the hometown of my parents. I grew up in a small town about 20 miles south, but we often traveled there to visit family. Gary was always a gritty steel town, since it was founded by U.S. Steel a little over 100 years ago. But I remember that it also had large, lovely homes.  Gary also had a vibrant downtown with superb department stores, such as Lytton’s and H.C. Gordon & Sons.

That was then. Those stores are long gone. My aunts, uncles, and cousins all moved out. My mother’s childhood home burned down.  And Gary itself has become a kind of Hoosier Hellhole.

Today Gary has one of the highest crime rates in the U.S., even when compared to much larger cities. Its violent crime rate is one of the highest anywhere. In short, Gary has become like the little brother to its bigger neighbor Chicago — only without the professional sports teams and world-class museums.

Yet Mellencamp continues to pound the drum for progressive politics, calling himself a “blue guy in a red state.” He supports Democrats — the same progressives who have run the city of Gary since the 1940’s, and continue to preside over its destruction.

But while black lives continue to violently die at an enormous rate in Gary, the Hoosier Huckster Mellencamp lives in a 10,000 square foot home near Bloomington, Indiana, valued at $6.3M. And just last month it was reported that he snagged a loft in Soho, NYC, for a cool $2.3M. But that’s just a small place where he can get his creative juices flowing again, you see.

So what has Mellencamp done for poor black lives in Gary? Has he performed any fundraisers there? Does he do any charity work for the city? Has he even visited the town? After all, it’s just a three-hour drive going northwest from Bloomington on I-65.

Oops, sorry. He wrote a song which includes Gary in the lyrics. My bad.

Now Mellencamp, like most celebrities, supports his pet charities. But they include the typical trendy stuff: AIDS, the environment, and something called Celebrity Fight Night. Oh, and he also supports Farm Aid, which is one of his favorite projects. It’s good for his image as America’s Heartland Rocker.

But Gary, Indiana, can go pound sand, I guess, except when the name can be used in a song to burnish Mellencamp’s Midwest Minstrel image.

So I’m calling out Mellencamp as a typical celebrity hypocrite, no matter where he lives. And while he has the right to take a knee and fist pump on stage in an anti-American rant, I also have the right to call out his horseshit. After all, ain’t that America?