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?
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With all this hullabaloo about Obama, don’t miss the new song from Together Through Life
