A friend responding to my The Changed Times Don’t Last , one of Monday’s “On the Square” articles, sent the link to a website called Rightwing Bob . The site’s owner writes in his description of what he’s doing that he seeks
to redress the balance a little bit. Leftists have had it too much to themselves in co-opting this great American songwriter’s work for their purposes. Through all the occasions on which Bob has riled and offended them (e.g. when he asserted his artistic independence in 1964; when he declined to write songs about Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam protest era ; and worst of all when he sang directly about his love of God ), the leftists have always let some time pass, and then posited that Dylan had just gone through a phase of some kind but essentially still belonged to them. Well, I’d suggest that he doesn’t belong to anybody on this earth— and that his work belongs to all of us.
He also, it turns out, responds to my article and in fact wrote an “On the Square” article on Dylan that appeared in May of 2007. I would note in response to his exegesis that when I described “The Times They Are a-Changing” as an “anthem” I was talking about its cultural standing at the time I first heard it, which is separate from what Dylan might have intended.
