Tag: barack obama

The UK Times Online has a response today to the excerpts from Bob Dylan’s interview with Bill Flanagan that were published yesterday and analyzed so astutely in this space. The new article is titled: After the summer of love, Bob Dylan backtracks on Barack Obama.

Up until now it had been a mutual love affair.

As the campaign for the American presidency gathered pace last June, Bob Dylan lent his support to Barack Obama, telling The Times that his candidacy was “redefining the nature of politics”.

In return Mr Obama described the singer as an icon, and boasted of having “probably 30 Dylan songs on my iPod”, including “the entire Blood on the Tracks album”.

But in an interview to be published on Dylan’s website today, the hero of 1960s counterculture seems to have cooled on the prospects of the recently elected American leader.

Asked if he thought that Mr Obama would make a good president, the singer said that he had no idea.

What’s that old saying or warning about the press? “They’ll build you up and then they’ll tear you down.” This is a particularly perverse twist on that concept. The media created the story of the “mutual love affair” between Bob Dylan and Barack Obama, and now somehow Dylan is to blame for not playing along.

All of this originated with an article by Alan Jackson in the Times last June. The article as a whole was just fine — Bob was giving the interview in order to talk about his artwork, an exhibition of which was about to open up in London. And it’s an interesting interview on the subject of his paintings and drawings, worth rereading.

But it was not the substance of this interview on his artwork that got picked up and spread around the world. It was the completely off-topic ambush at the end. As I remarked at the time (and still wonder about), it’s quite possible that Dylan didn’t even know his words at this point were going to be in the published interview. Read it again:

My time with Dylan is up and we stand in preparation for my leaving the room. As a last aside, I ask for his take on the US political situation in the run-up to November’s presidential election.

“Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval,” he says. “Poverty is demoralising. You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up … Barack Obama. He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’ll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I’m hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.” He offers a parting handshake. “You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future,” he notes as the door closes between us.

Note that we don’t hear what the actual question was that Dylan was asked. Note the “…” at one point, telling us that something was redacted. Note, above all, that what Dylan is quoted as saying doesn’t appear to make any clear sense. Sure, he appears to be saying something quite positive about Obama, although we can’t tell if he’s smiling while saying it, or being at all ironic when he credits a politician with “redefining the nature of politics from the ground up.” But what is that stuff about poverty and purity? How does that fit with anything else he’s saying? I don’t care how smart you think you are: it is incomprehensible in any normal way, as published. It’s crying out for more context or a follow-up question. But there is none. As they stand up to go their separate ways, the journalist threw some unknown question at Bob about politics and then later printed this rather mixed-up response from him. The editor should have struck it out, frankly. But instead, I’m sure the editor was wetting his pants, knowing what a big story it would be, if it could be spun as “Bob Dylan endorses Barack Obama!” And the Times duly did that in a separate article, and the rest of the world enthusiastically followed suit.

It became gospel. Well, some might say, “Dylan didn’t fight it.” But then, he never does, does he? If he tried to fight every distortion and misconstrual that appears in the press with regard to himself, he would go crazy in about twelve hours flat (believe me, I know). Later, Jann Wenner interviewed The One on the campaign trail, and did his best to erect the entire myth in stone.

WENNER:
You were endorsed by Bob Dylan a few days ago. What’s that mean to you?

OBAMA:
I’ve got to say, having both Dylan and Bruce Springsteen say kind words about you is pretty remarkable. Those guys are icons.

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it, to endorse someone for president and then, not even 90 days into his presidency, say that you “have no idea” if he’ll even be a good president. But the endorsement never happened. It was fog, mirrors and wishful thinking, pushed hard by Jann Wenner and a host of other committed leftists pursuing their undeclared agenda in the pages of newspapers and magazines everywhere. Nothing much new there. Then, we had Dylan’s remarks from the stage in Minnesota on election night, and more distortion by the media, completely leaving out the context and the irony inherent in Dylan’s words.

It’s a lesson, if needed, on the extraordinarily strict standard to which you have to subject everything that you read. And that goes double when politics is involved, and quadruple when the name Bob Dylan is involved.

…

On a personal note, I well remember the day that Dylan’s alleged endorsement of Barack Obama hit the wires. I was out of state on vacation and not planning on blogging or anything like that. Not having seen the news, I casually checked my e-mail. Expecting at most one or two messages, I was greeted by a couple of dozen. Quite a few were from people who apparently don’t like RWB very much (a thing which is very painful to contemplate), saying things like, “See this?!” “What do you say to that!!” and “Look’s like your site’s reason for being just ended!!” There was also a reporter from ABC News trying to get my reaction to it. Altogether, I was suddenly pretty busy, coming up with an instant response and then writing about it in this space. In truth, rather than trying to figure out Dylan’s remarks, I should have just said: This is nonsense, and incomprehensible as printed. Not Dylan’s fault, just bad journalism. Of-course, that wouldn’t have been enough for anyone — it would have seemed like a cop-out. But the passing of time has proven, in my belief, that this is really the only way to look at it.

Of-course yesterday, when the Times found itself printing what is effectively the antidote to their previous shoddy story, in the form of a plain Q & A between Bob Dylan and Bill Flanagan, I didn’t get any calls from news organizations asking for my reaction to Bob Dylan not being an Obama endorser after all. And there were no e-mails from enemies saying, “Hey, guess we were wrong about this – sorry!”

About this, I am not at all surprised, but never let it be thought that I am so noble as to resist pointing it out.

It was in the UK Times last June where the whole “Bob Dylan endorses Barack Obama” story got started, so it is appropriately ironic (if indeed it is not purposeful) that it is in the UK Times today that that whole canard gets put finally to rest. (D’ya think?!)

The third part of Bob Dylan’s interview with Bill Flanagan is published in the Times Online today, instead of at BobDylan.com where we read the earlier parts.

The second part of the interview closed with Bob being asked some general questions about politics. Let’s recap:

[Bill Flanagan] What’s your take on politics?

[Bob Dylan] Politics is entertainment. It’s a sport. It’s for the well groomed and well heeled. The impeccably dressed. Party animals. Politicians are interchangeable.

[BF] Don’t you believe in the democratic process?

[BD] Yeah, but what’s that got to do with politics? Politics creates more problems than it solves. It can be counter-productive. The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don’t think they have titles.

Not a vote of confidence in politicians in general, as being the kind of people who can bring on an “age of light” or anything like that. When the interview starts up again, Flanagan doesn’t pursue Bob on his assertion about power being “in the hands of small groups of people.” That’s a pity, since it leaves the impression that Dylan might subscribe to some odd conspiracy theories. And, well, maybe he does! But kudos to Bill Flanagan for going directly at Bob on the subject of Barack Obama. Herewith is the money part of the exchange (of-course everyone will read the whole interview at the Times Online site).

Bill Flanagan: In that song Chicago After Dark were you thinking about the new President?

Bob Dylan: Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had.

BF: You liked Barack Obama early on. Why was that?

BD: I’d read his book and it intrigued me.

BF: Audacity of Hope?

BD: No it was called Dreams of My Father.

BF: What struck you about him?

BD: Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage – cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.

BF: In what way?

BD: First of all, Barack is born in Hawaii. Most of us think of Hawaii as paradise – so I guess you could say that he was born in paradise.

BF: And he was thrown out of the garden.

BD: Not exactly. His mom married some other guy named Lolo and then took Barack to Indonesia to live. Barack went to both a Muslim school and a Catholic school. His mom used to get up at 4:00 in the morning and teach him book lessons three hours before he even went to school. And then she would go to work. That tells you the type of woman she was. That’s just in the beginning of the story.

BF: What else did you find compelling about him?

BD: Well, mainly his take on things. His writing style hits you on more than one level. It makes you feel and think at the same time and that is hard to do. He says profoundly outrageous things. He’s looking at a shrunken head inside of a glass case in some museum with a bunch of other people and he’s wondering if any of these people realize that they could be looking at one of their ancestors.

BF: What in his book would make you think he’d be a good politician?

BD: Well nothing really.[emphasis added] In some sense you would think being in the business of politics would be the last thing that this man would want to do. I think he had a job as an investment banker on Wall Street for a second – selling German bonds. But he probably could’ve done anything. If you read his book, you’ll know that the political world came to him. It was there to be had.

BF: Do you think he’ll make a good president?

BD: I have no idea.[emphasis added] He’ll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of them going back. You know, it’s like they all fly too close to the sun and get burned.

This all really leaves me with just about nothing to comment upon. It’s just about as straightforward as you can get, isn’t it? Bob Dylan was intrigued by Barack Obama as an American figure — and he certainly is an interesting American figure — but it wasn’t about believing he was some kind of savior, or even about supporting his political agenda in particular. He read Obama’s book — not the fluffy one he ran for president on, but the earlier one that’s actually about his life — and found it interesting. As illustrated in the later part of the interview, Bob is a history buff (we knew that already anyway). He reads plenty of American history, and he has a fascination with presidents. He is struck by Obama’s blood ancestry, and the idea that he might even be related to Jefferson Davis! But he has “no idea” if Obama will make a good president.

There is nothing much for me to comment on here, because it pretty much matches how I thought Bob looked at these things. On the other hand, those who were under the impression that he did endorse Barack Obama last June, and those who were under the impression that his remarks on election night in Minnesota were a joyous welcoming of the new era of Obama, as they were portrayed in many other places — those people will have a pretty hard time reconciling these straightforward remarks of Bob to Bill Flanagan with their mistaken conception of where Bob has been coming from.

In this case, his remarks are clear because we are getting them verbatim and in context, and the interviewer is doing a decent job of getting at what Bob thinks. In the Times interview from last June, this was not the case, when it came to his remarks about Obama. And the remarks from the stage in November were unclear because they were remarks from the stage, and so many people just needed to presume that Bob was expressing their own inner joy at Obama’s election (even when it was helpfully explained that this was not really the case).

What’s left to say? In terms of Bob’s personal politics — if he thinks about things that way — nothing is revealed. He’s neither endorsing nor slamming Barack Obama. He simply is saying he finds it interesting, from a historical perspective, to watch this next chapter unfold in the long drama of the U.S. presidency.

It might be noted that he includes Richard Nixon as one of those presidents who came “into office with the best of intentions” and left as a beaten man. That is not the thinking of any doctrinaire liberal/left individual.

But then, we all knew that Bob has never been one of those. Didn’t we?

…

With all this hullabaloo about Obama, don’t miss the new song from Together Through Life which has been released today. It’s I Feel A Change Comin’ On, and you can hear it on that page at the Times and elsewhere. And no, it’s not about Barack Obama. But it is a darn cool song, I think. This album seems to have just a gorgeous and wonderful feel to it. I can’t wait.