Caterwauling Canuck “folk singer” Joni Mitchell got just about everybody riled up with that sweet morsel of self-serving insight, but the real shock is not that Mitchell is absolutely correct but that someone finally came out and said it. After decades of carefully manicured deification by Columbia Records, brain-dead rock critics and the slimy elite institution that elevated such barely able snake-oil salesmen as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to celestial heights, it’s high time to flout indoctrination and examine Dylan’s track record as a Grade-A phony. 

Most Dylan fans would be stunned to realize that his vocal style (for lack of a better term) was high-jacked, in its entirety, from long-dead bluegrass-country singer Carter Stanley. We’re not talking about an influence, like Lefty Frizzell for Merle Haggard, but a total appropriation of  Stanley’s highly idiosyncratic approach. A counterfeit from the get-go, once Dylan realized what an advantage his audience’s innate ignorance was, he’s exploited it ever since. 

Just type “Bob Dylan plagiarism” into your friendly search engine, and a plethora of questionable circumstances pop up, enrobing the singer almost as completely as his years of reflexive media fawning have. Documented from his teenage start, when he submitted a hand written, thinly revised version of country star Hank Snow’s “Little Buddy” for publication as an original poem, to his 1963 pilferage of Irish poet Dominic Behan’s “Patriot Game”’s melody for the similarly slanted Dylan tune “With God on Our Side” to songwriter James Damiano’s ongoing multimillion dollar copyright infringement suit (alleging Dylan’s Grammy-nominated “Dignity” is nothing but an altered version of Damiano’s “Steel Guitars”) to the naked “Red Sails in the Sunset” melody heist for the song “Beyond The Horizon” on his Modern Times album, up through the recent Confessions of a Yakuza-Love & Theft plagiarism charges (Love & Theft? Calling Dr. Freud!), the Timrod controversy, even the numerous passages of Proust and Jack London that (re) appear in the text of Dylan’s autobiography, it’s a deep, dark thicket of thoroughly damning and apparently chronic bootlegging. Naturally, Dylan has said nothing publicly about any of these, but he already spent over three million dollars defending himself against one-time affiliate Damiano–the classic delay-to-destroy court room technique. 

Defenders and apologist have an extraordinary array of excuses on Zim’s behalf, from use of “literary allusion” to his building a “cultural collage,” or that his “borrowing” is “homage,” to the more deliciously desperate “he obviously doesn’t NEED to do it” (strangely, though, he always has). This instamatic, Clinton-ian  excuse making serves only to further polish up the shine on Dylan’s teflon hubris and to underscore the blind, Pavlovian worship which he has long enjoyed. Let’s face it: as a lyricist, Dylan is crap, inarguably unworthy beside, say, Hank Cochran, Chuck Berry, Mickey Newbury or Jimi Hendrix (“All Along the Watchtower” plays as a lead balloon even for Hendrix, nearly deflating his Electric Ladyland masterpiece). 

While we’re endlessly told that “The pump don’t work / cause the vandals took the handle” is vintage Dylan worthy of class room study, in truth it’s little more than the wordy spew of a peripatetic rhyming dictionary who’ll hang any phrase together as long as it fits. Metaphor is convenience, not expression for Dylan. His songs have also treated women quite badly: the entire attitude of “It Ain‘t Me, Babe“ is ugly; “Just Like a Woman” is nothing short of misogynistic, but, worst of all, Dylan’s sheer verbosity has ineradicably stained American pop music, and we’ve all had to suffer through the post-Dylan legacy of long-winded nonsense (“American Pie,” anyone?). 

Dylan and Mitchell

The real tragedy is that none of these very well-documented and nigh irrefutable plagiarism charges will ever emerge from the shadows, as the Cult of Zimmerman’s hulking form casts a very, very long one. Even when the Hank Snow rip-off stared the world in its face, the strongest reaction was a nervous giggle and murmurs of youthful indiscretion. To capitulate the carefully constructed myth of folk music and Dylan’s subsequent installation as rock & roll’s poet laureate is unthinkable, a hot, hit-the-panic-button nightmare for generations of quiescent “hipsters“ never weaned from the million-selling Dylan teat. His socio-cultural mystique is also an industry-manufactured  sham, one that very handily diverted attention away from genuine political stink-stirrers like the MC5 or the lysergic guerilla warfare of the 13th Floor Elevators. 

As a junta-backed counter-culture figurehead, Dylan is ideal: a harmless, unoriginal patsy, a cute insouciant whose relentlessly self-involved stance never threatened anyone, save for the hazard of the droning lip service endlessly paid him. We should all praise Joni Mitchell for this overdue call-out (just don‘t ask us to listen to her records), but it’s unlikely that any in the Zim Cult will even consider the ramifications of her statement. But when you pile it up with all the rest, there’s a single conclusion to be made: Bob Dylan is an artistic (and ethical) fraud, one whose own fear of creativity has long since given way to an apparently lifelong practice of emulating his superiors by vampirism, siphoning off their intellectual blood and using it to top off his own under-baked efforts. Weirdly, even then, the results have been scarcely palatable.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the ridiculous, cynical remake of “We are the World,” an exercise that according to news accounts seemed less focused on assisting the people of Haiti than on stroking the egos of the pseudo-stars and future nobodies who did the yodeling.

The tiresome video (directed by the tiresome Paul Haggis) raises an important question – who the hell are these people?  I think one of them – the dude with the expensive clothes and dull stare – was Puff Diddley or P. Daddy or whatever idiotic moniker he’s using this week.  You know, there was a time when grown men used their given names instead of childish nicknames that are just emblems of the eternal adolescence that modern pop culture worships. 

Now, the original “We are the World” was itself nearly unlistenable, but that’s a matter of taste and reasonable people can disagree (I thought the British supergroup Band-Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was a much better song, though it shared “World’s” inexcusable refusal to confront the reason the Ethiopian drought turned into the Ethiopian famine – the cruelty and stupidity of its left wing government ).  However, at least most of the participants were people with track records of success.  You had Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan, Dionne Warwick and a bunch of others.  Now, not all of them might have been your cup of tea – I’d rather pass a kidney stone made of broken glass than listen to the Boss – but you had at least heard of them.

Let’s review the crop of hit-making legends present at the recording of the remake:  Well, Barbra Streisand showed up.  She’s a real star, and her presence assures the buy-in of the middle-aged gay couple demographic.  There’s “will.i.am.”  Mr. am is a member of a group called the Black Eyed Peas.  I’ve also heard of them.  They suck.  And you’ve also got noted cannabis aficionado Snoop Dogg, who probably did it because he confused Haiti with Jamaica.

Also present were entities known as “Weezy,” “Drake,” and “Kanye West.”  I thought “Weezy” was Sherman Helmsley’s wife on The Jeffersons.  Apparently she’s gained some tats, some extra appendages and started rapping.  Drake sounds like a cool name for a private eye, but my guess is he’s a rapper too.  Apparently most “stars” today are rappers.  I have heard of this Kanye fellow – I think he blamed Hurricane Katrina on George Bush.  I bet he blames the earthquake on 43 as well – hell, apparently everything’s Bush’s fault anyway.

The news report on the recording session also raised more questions than it answered with sentences like:

Fifteen-year-old Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber, who sang the opening line originally performed by Richie, joked that he would ask his new friend, R&B singer Akon, to get the telephone number of Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls.

I know who Lionel Ritchie is, and I know what Canada is.  Other than that, these words make no sense when placed in that sequence.

We can sum up the whole thing with another sentence from the same news story:  “Randy Phillips, one of the organizers, said his ‘one regret’ was the absence of dance-pop star Lady Gaga.”

How lame is any endeavor where the absence of Lady Gaga makes it worse?

The point isn’t that charity is bad.  USA for Africa generated tens of millions and hopefully it was well spent.  To the extent this generates money that is neither squandered nor diverted into the pockets of thugs, good.  The point is not that these singers are somehow wrong for using their talents, such as they are, to assist others in emergencies – we should all do so when disasters happen.

The point is that in 25 years the concept of celebrity has degenerated into parody.  Borderline cretins with fake boobs and bulging wallets wander the streets of Los Angeles pursued by hordes of shutter-clicking parasites in self-reinforcing cycle of publicity whetting the appetite for more publicity.  Glance about the magazines at the supermarket check-out line – consider yourself on the cutting edge of pop culture if one face in ten makes an impression.  You have some NBC reality star’s heartbreaking split from a dude who plays a brooding werewolf on the CW while a breasty gal from a show on MTV beckons from the cover of Cosmo, promising to disclose her patented sex tips – tips that can probably be summed up with the words “Anyone, anytime, anywhere that might help my career in any way.”

The original “We are the World” was an event; this one is a mere occurrence.  And the reasons are not hard to see.  We have celebrities who do not deserve celebration.  We have a public grown weary of the shameless antics and craven pandering of the celebrity culture.  Who actually believes that most of the participants want anything more from this recording session than a close-up on Entertainment Tonight before they slink back across to the far side of the velvet rope? 

Or perhaps this really isn’t a just another ploy designed to feed the fame machine.  Maybe these “stars” do care about the people of Haiti.  After all, if there’s one thing that the name “Snoop Dogg” is synonymous with, it’s caring about others.

Track 1: Do Re Mi by Bob Dylan: I used to have the Woody Guthrie version of this song on my iPod. After about three years I noticed I had played it twice, so I swiftly deleted it along with the rest of the incredibly tedious ‘Pastures of Plenty’ CD. From the brief snatch I heard of Dylan’s version he’s rasping away as usual, but it still sounds better than the original, which is rotten.

Q: Didn’t Dylan explicitly distance himself from this whole protest thing in his memoir published a few years back?

A: Yes he did.

Track 2: The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen: I’ve always found the boss’s aching sincerity difficult to swallow. Here it goes down a lot easier, because it ends faster.

Track 3: Masters of War: This is a Dylan original, another track that used to live on my iPod deleted due to its pointlessness. I actually felt embarrassed whenever Dylan’s interminable rant came up on shuffle. It always conjured up hideous images of the bearded children of prosperity playing at radicalism in the 1960s. Mr. Vedder takes the MTV unplugged approach to underscore his sincerity. Grrr! He’s angry!

Track 4: Dear Mr. President: This is by ‘P!nk’ who used to be married to a skateboarder or a motocross rider or something like that, and who once had a hit about starting parties. In fact, I remember this song: it is an original ‘P!nk’ composition from one of her more recent albums, a savage critique of the Antichrist George W. Bush, in which she addresses the former president thus:

I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?

Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep.

Apparently she never sent the questions to Mr. Bush because his answers do not appear in the text of the song- which is sh!t, needless to say.

Track 5: Sail Away: Ah yes, Randy Newman. I believe he did that #hilarious# song about dwarfs. Some people like him. As for me, a friend once lent me a CD of a musical Newman had written about Faust that was so achingly unfunny it killed my ability to listen to his contrived crooning, even when he’s singing Disney theme songs. Still at least he’s playing a piano, and not doing that ultra-hackneyed earnest, soulful warble over solo acoustic guitar thing designed to convey SINCERITY like the preceding three artists.

Track 6: American Terrorist: The performer is a gentleman who goes by the name of Lupe Fiasco. I just checked, and his real name is actually Wasalu Muhammad Jaco which is much more exciting. The song title is a bit of a red flag, and in the Amazon snippet I noticed a few references to bombs, anthrax, the Bible and the ‘glorious Koran’- and also something about civilians and little children getting hurt. Thankfully the excerpt then ended. Note to Mr. Fiasco/Jaco: ‘misinterpretated’ is not a word.

Track 7: Drums of War: With a title like you’d expect something a bit aggressive, provocative, maybe even some drums. But no, it’s back to the clichéd acoustic guitar/voice combination again, this time courtesy of Jackson Yawn- I’m sorry-Browne, who succeeds in the mere seconds Amazon allots him to induce a crippling numbness from the waist down. No, really I can’t feel my legs. Help me, somebody!

Track 8: What’s Going On: The Marvin Gaye original of this song is actually very good, even if much of the rest of the record it comes from isn’t. This version, by John Legend is once again stripped down (to piano this time) and I’m actually starting to get annoyed by how unnecessary this People Speak record really is: I mean, whose idea was this pile of crap?

Track 9: See How We Are by Exene Cervenka: I just had a look at Wikipedia and discovered that Exene Cervenka is a member of the punk band X. Apparently she recently discovered that she suffers from multiple sclerosis, so I am not going to say anything horrible about this song, but will instead pass over it in silence.

Track 10: Blues with a Feeling, performed by Taj Mahal: Don’t you think Taj Mahal is an excellent pseudonym? Not as good as Sun Ra perhaps, but it’s up there. Excellent selection of name, Mr. Mahal!

Track 11: Brother Can You Spare a Dime by somebody called Alison Moorer, not to be confused with Alan Moore, author of the Watchmen, who used to sing in a band called the Sinister Ducks. More acoustic guitar, singing, etc. The good news is that even the full version on the CD is only 1:51 long, so at least it’s over quickly.

Track 12: A Pawn in their Game, another old Dylan song this time performed by Rich Robinson, whose Dylan impersonation is nowhere near as good as Adrian Belew’s on the Frank Zappa track ‘Flakes’- which was itself a protest song about bad plumbers, car mechanics etc. After this the record mercifully ends.

Conclusions:

1) At least it doesn’t have Joan Baez on it.

2) I’m actually glad that Verve didn’t send me the CD otherwise I would have played it, which would have induced not only severe boredom but a profound sense of irritation at having the ossified 1960s protest song industry rammed down my throat once again. If you like the sound of vain people who write pop ditties taking themselves very seriously, embracing ‘dissent’ while marching in political lockstep then this is the CD/download for you! If not, then I’d advise you to spend your money on something more worthwhile- some toothpicks, for example, or perhaps a lot of balloons with Spongebob’s face on them. Or maybe you could just burn your money instead, and send the ashes in an envelope to whichever musical criminals are responsible for the conception and execution of this rancid record.

You know, as a protest.

“Hearing Bob hack out the words ‘With angelic host proclaim/Christ is born in Bethlehem’ reminds one of grandpa clearing his throat after finishing a glass of eggnog,” wrote Joseph Brannigan Lynch at Entertainment Weekly.  It’s no joke, writes Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard; it’s worse than that – Christmas in the Heart is a deliberate “affront, a taunt,” to fans and downright “embarrassing.”

–

So, is it really that bad?  Not really.  Dylan’s work tends to inspire either over-praise or over-criticism, and this album is no exception (though receiving far more of the latter).

My reaction upon hearing the record lurch to life with “Here Comes Santa Claus ” in my ear buds was first to laugh; whether a joke or not, this shit is funny. Mostly because Dylan sounds so uncharacteristically jovial and (yes, I’ll say it) jolly, even.  My second reaction was relief – it’s nice to hear that from Dylan for a change.

The songs as a collection are hit and miss.  “Here Comes Santa Claus” is all kinds of strange fun; “Do You Hear What I Hear” sounds eerily perfect for Dylan, as if he could have written it; “White Wonderland” is, well, unfortunate; and “Hark The Herald Angels Sing” is, to my ears, unlistenable.

But that’s not the worst moment on Christmas in the Heart.  That dubious distinction goes to “Must Be Santa,” a hideous polka-shaped monster that terrorizes the eardrums with psychotic glee.  I shiver at the memory.

The high point of the album comes midway through, with a splendid “O’ Come All Ye Faithful” and a spot-on “The Christmas Blues” that practically begs for a spiked, spicy drink, an ablaze fireplace, and a sweatered loved one with whom to sway in the shadow of a tinseled spruce.

The standout track is “Little Drummer Boy.”  Dylan’s barely-sung hush is perfect here in a way that is hard to fathom; the band does not so much as play as suggest the music; and the backup vocals hang dutifully above it all.  The effect of the whole is a sliver of angelic light pouring into a darkened manger – beautiful.

The rest of the album is comprised of middling tunes, neither awful nor great, but perfectly in keeping with Dylan’s late career re-exploration of traditional American music.  All in all, you could do a lot worse for a disk to spin on Christmas Eve, which is exactly what I (minus one or two tracks) intend to do.

Christmas in the Heart is not Dylan’s best album, but nor is it his worst (Self Portrait, anyone?).  But it is his most explicitly Christian record since his late-70’s, early ’80’s born-again phase, which produced the Christian themed triptych Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love. Critics hated those, far beyond what the music merited, just as they hate Christmas in the Heart.

Draw what conclusions you will.

-”I take a three-minute shower,” [Jennifer Aniston] told Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen, authors of The Green Book. She even brushes her teeth while she’s in there.

-“Entourage” star Adrian Grenier has lived in an apartment insulated with old pants.

-Vegetarian and planetary crusader Tobey Maguire reportedly has banned all leather products from his house. He also “makes everyone take off their leather belts and shoes and leave them by the door!”

-Leonardo DiCaprio “stays green at home, too—with his $3,200 eco-friendly toilet!”

-Bob Dylan sells “renewable grocery bags” at his concerts.

-Disney Channel star Selena Gomez recently announced that her yet-to-debut clothing line will be as green as can be.

Full article here.

On another note, what is a “renewable grocery bag”?  Dictionary.com says renewable (in the environmentalism sense) means “inexhaustible or replaceable by new growth.”  Assuming we are talking about those canvas bags you see people taking to and from Whole Foods, we’re not sure the word “renewable” applies.  It seems like the word “renewable” is the latest eco-babble buzz word.

Still, props to E! for acknowledging at least some of these things are “stupid.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Chapter Three

ACTORS TO ACTIVISTS

Sometimes activists happen to become actors and musicians. It happens more than we might think. And why not? It takes a natural drive and outspoken ambition to claw into stardom. So it makes sense that many famous names and faces have something to say – and it’s not off a script. 

Robin Bronk heads The Creative Coalition, the leading political advocacy group for show business. Bronk says nowadays “celebrities need an agent, a manager, a publicist and an issue.” Saving the spotted owl or protesting against landmines isn’t necessarily good for an acting career, but it shows how the power of celebrity can be used to change minds. “There’s no need to check your citizenship at the stage door,” says Bronk.  All of this idealism can come off as goofy to a Washington desk-jockey. But it is wise not to brush it off; celebrities at the top of their game can successfully push an agenda straight through the stuffiest bureaucracy. 

Senate Dining Room, Washington, D.C., 1970’s Actor Marlon Brando dines with Senator Charles Percy (R-IL).  Brando wrote in Songs my Mother Taught Me, “Simply because you’re a movie star, people empower you with special rights and privileges.”  Brando grew to understand those privileges using his influence to stump for civil rights, better treatment for Native Americans and fair housing. (Photo courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office)

Political media sage and songwriter Mark McKinnon notes, “musicians especially almost always represent the anti-establishment, the voice without power.” Think of activist musicians like Bob Dylan, Bono and Peter, Paul and Mary.  McKinnon continues, “part of the Hollywood-Washington relationship is finding the art of the possible.” 

The result of all this goodwill and ambition can lead to some offbeat alliances — exotic film actress Angelina Jolie plots refugee camp security with Sen. Richard Lugar, trailblazing baseball player Jackie Robinson turns up the heat on President Eisenhower for civil rights and rock star Bono and President George W. Bush buddy up over AIDS policies. 

Grand Foyer, The White House, October 1985 Pres. Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan pose with action star Sylvester Stallone and his wife actress Brigitte Nielsen during a State Dinner for Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.  What better way to impress a head of state – invite Rambo to dinner. (Photo Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.)

There is plenty historic evidence that Hollywood is a powerful mouthpiece for political candidates or issues. In World War II, Rita Hayworth, Bing Crosby, and Fred Astaire asked Americans to buy War Bonds to support U.S. forces. Hollywood played a prominent role in the civil rights movement as stars such as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Sammy Davis Jr. led marches on Washington in the 1960’s. Dan Glickman sees Hollywood from both the political side and within the film industry as the president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America. “When a celebrity shows up at your hearing on Capitol Hill,” he notes, “you are guaranteed to have a full room of reporters, staff members – and it usually means more congressmen show up too.” Whatever the result, it is always great theater when actors turn into activists.

On a rainy day last week in Long Branch, NJ, Bob Dylan, wearing a hood, was peering into a for-sale home when a neighbor called the police fearing he might be a burglar. Two young officers arrived on the scene and neither of them knew who Bob Dylan was. They asked for I.D. – he had none but explained he was a musician on tour with John Mellencamp and they were set to play at a nearby stadium in Lakewood. Without fuss or anger, Mr. Dylan was escorted back to his tour bus where he produced I.D.

That was that. End of incident.

The way CNN reported it made certain you’d never see the obvious correlation to the Professor Gates incident in Boston. How did they do this? With the headline, ”Bob Dylan a Complete Unknown in NJ Town,” which is a pretty vague headline and gives no indication police were even present.

The story is not that the officers were too young to know who Dylan was — it’s the fact that Dylan didn’t mind proving who he was. If we’re ever going to rise above race-baiting, news outlets have a duty to shine an even brighter light on decent behavior.

But CNN made sure you’d never know Dylan was the anti-Gates.

“Beyond Here Lies Nothing” shambles to life like a dusty corpse shuffling to a slow and sloppy rumba.  Dylan oversees the proceedings: part funeral director, part carnival barker, commanding ancient instruments and sentiments with a wink and a throaty growl.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, tonally, musically, lyrically, is “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”- imagine a sunny spring stroll down a country lane with your heart subsumed with thoughts of a new and tender love, and you have an idea of what this tune will do to you.

That Dylan can command these two diametrically opposite songs (on the same album, no less) is testimony to his expansive talent – he is large, he contains multitudes, and is frighteningly comfortable with all the sides of his protean and encompassing nature.

It is sad to have to report, then, that “Together Through Life” as a collection is merely excellent and nowhere near the high standard set by his recent late career renaissance.  It is a must have for Dylan purists only – for everyone else, the two aforementioned tracks are all that are needed.

Far superior is last autumn’s horrifically overlooked Tell Tale Signs, a collection of outtakes, alternate versions, and live performances taken from the last twenty years, from 1989’s Oh Mercy to 2006’s Modern Times.  It is a revelation, easily placed alongside Blood on the Tracks and Blonde on Blonde as among his very best.  It is a collection full of glorious gems inconceivably left off of the albums for which they were originally recorded.

“Most of the Time,” for example, from the Daniel Lanois produced Oh Mercy, is a slow burn, electric and moody with murky production and instrumentation.  The version which appears on Tell Tale Signs, however, features just Dylan and his acoustic guitar, a sped-up take which showcases his sinewy and preternatural phrasing as he slips the complex verses in between invisible spaces in the rhythm.

Then there are the new tunes (new to our ears, at least) – “Someday Baby” is a heart wrenching chronicle of a one-sided relationship; the narrator gives and gives but receives nothing but abuse and neglect in return.  He wearily accepts this fate, however, as the only way he can be close to his beloved.

“Born in Time” and “Huck’s Tune” are subtle demons – at first they leave little impression.  Successive listens, however, peel back layers and layers of depth and ambiguity. The live versions of “Ring Them Bells” and “Lonesome Day Blues” are blistering reminders of how hard Dylan can rock when he wants to (and, I might add, what an underrated guitar player he is).

And then there’s “Can’t Escape From You,” as Goth as hell and not going to take it anymore.  A more funeral dirge cannot be found this side of Joy Division, and indeed here Dylan shows bands like The Sisters of Mercy to be the effete pretenders we always knew they were.

The fact that “Cant Escape From You” was hidden until now will confound musicologists for decades: What for any other artist would be a career peak was for Dylan, it seems, an afterthought.  There is something heartbreaking about this song, but also something vaguely sinister – Dylan’s voice, pushed now to near its seventh decade, drips with more than a little knowing of the grave, like Odin swinging from the Tree of Life, the wisdom of the dead upon his lips.

So my advice: Skip the new record and get Tell Tale Signs. Both albums, however, have something in common – they occupy a musical space that doesn’t really exist anymore.  Dylan synthesizes everything from Hillbilly Appalachian to Harlem jazz to Nashville Western to Scotty Moore rockabilly.  All of these uniquely American sounds seep from his pores – he knows this music, loves it, and lives it.  He is both its last and greatest practitioner.

Dylan lives, but he is already a ghost, haunting us with the harmonies of a long dead Republic.

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Townhall.  His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.

In all of the uproar about how the stinky porta-potty at Bob Dylan’s Malibu compound is making his neighbors ill, has no one stopped to think about the rank (pardon the pun) hypocrisy on the part of Dylan, who made his fortune singing songs about the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, the haves versus the have-nots?

In this Red Pepper article reviewing the politics of Dylan’s music during the 1960s, we learn that…

‘Maggie’s Farm’ – booed by purists at the Newport folk festival – fuses class and generational rage in an uncompromising renunciation of wage labour. Here the power of the employers is propped up by ideology (“She talks to all the servants about man and God and law”) and the state (“the National Guard stands around her door”.) The social order is experienced as intrusive, deceitful, inimical to the individual’s need for self-definition. “I try my best to be just like I am/ but everybody wants you to be just like them.”

These themes were also explored in ‘It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding’, Dylan’s epic indictment of a society built on hypocrisy and greed (“money doesn’t talk it swears”). Here consciousness is the battleground; it’s where the individual struggles to extract some autonomy from the all-pervading corruption of a society ruled by commodities. (all emphasis mine)

Dylan scholars may be shocked to discover that this outhouse isn’t the result of Dylan’s love of the environment (fellow celebrities Sheryl Crow and Drew Barrymore have both displayed an affinity for more earth-pleasing defecation), but is for the sole use of his employees. Now I understand that maybe he doesn’t want people traipsing in and out of the house day and night, but couldn’t he afford to build a nicer outdoor facility with running water? Seeing as how he was able to bypass handicap accessibility requirements to build a guard house by promising not to hire any handicapped people, surely he could have gotten permission to build a decent restroom for the hard-working security guards hired to protect Dylan from Malibu riff raff.

As an employer, shouldn’t Dylan be using his power for the good of his employees? What about the social order that keeps those security guards from using the nicer facility inside the house, complete with quilted toilet tissue and scented liquid soap? Yet they’re relegated to an outhouse, the smell of which is offensive to Dylan’s well-heeled neighbors. If it smells that bad in the yard next door, imagine how bad the smell is inside the outhouse? And what about that “uncompromising renunciation of wage labor?” It’d be interesting to know how much the security guards are paid and what kind of bennies they receive…

Dylan, like so many other Baby Boomer lefties whose existence was devoted – either violently or non-violently - to tearing down society and sticking it to The Man, seems to have sold out.  (Just check out William Ayers, hawking his book in the capitalist system he tried to destroy, and running to the cops for protection, forgetting his terrorist activities meant to maim and kill the police.) Dylan made his pile, moved to Malibu, and is now part of the establishment he so despised back in the day. And like many celebrities, he has plenty to say to the rest of us about how the world should be, but when it comes to his own activities, well, it’s just none of your business, peon.

I reinvented myself as a performer almost as many time as Dylan and I’m still standing. To quote my good friend, radio host Marc Germain, “I’m better than most and not as good as some.”

During the last ten years, I have moved from the club market into mostly corporate events. I have to work the phone and the e-mail list every day. My business life is like a shark: I have to keep moving all the time and I am always looking for my next meal. I get no sick days and no paid vacations. I have to provide for my own retirement. I pay for my own healthcare and 15.4% of everything I make goes to Social Security and Medicare. I spend about 160 days a year in a strange bed, alone, and another forty or fifty driving to one-nighters within four or five hours of my home. I spend countless hours in airports. Ahhh, the glamor of show business!

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining. This is the life I have chosen and long after anyone with any sense would have given up, I am still plugging away. Sometimes, right before I go on, I stop and think of the line from the movie “Patton,” “God help me. I love it so.” All I ask is that I be allowed to pursue my dream with a minimum of interference.

Recently, my job has come under attack by some high ranking Democrats. While bragging about how many jobs he was going to create and save, about how many shovels he was going to get turning, Mr. Obama has sent my industry into a tail spin. He has taken several broad swipes at corporate entertainment in the past few weeks. Because they also hate corporate fat cats, Senator John Kerry and Representative Barney Frank joined in and started slamming my little corner of show business as well. I’m sure President Obama and his droogies were just trying to embarrass these fat cats but that isn’t how it worked out.

He did the same thing with the corporate jet industry a few weeks earlier starting with the CEO’s of the auto industry.

He accomplished his mission. He embarrassed business leaders and they have been cutting back on entertaining. Unfortunately, due to the law of unintended consequences, it wasn’t the corporate fat cats that got hurt. They have mothballed their corporate jets and are suffering by flying first class to their vacation homes in the Bahamas, poor guys!

Who the president hurt were thousands of waiters, caterers, bartenders, stage hands, sound technicians, floor sweepers, decorators, jet pilots, mechanics, parts suppliers, hotel workers and even a few stand up comics who depend on those fat cats for their livelihoods.

Not all fat cats come under this Democrat microscope. This week in Miami, at the Fontainebleau Hotel, a fairly swanky joint, the AFL-CIO is hosting a little shindig. Not only are they not under fire for reckless spending while their union members are losing their jobs left and right, but a couple of high ranking Democrats including the Joe Biden will be down there cheering them on. I am guessing more than a few of them flew down to Miami on private aircraft. I wonder if they need a comic?

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