Has Bob Dylan Endorsed Obama?
Mercurial Songwriter Has Never Formally Endorsed a Politician
By CHRIS FRANCESCANI
June 6, 2008
Bob Dylan, the maverick architect of modern American protest music, appears to have endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Or did he?
In an apparent break from the singer-songwriter's lifelong policy of refusing to make political endorsements, Dylan told The Times of London, "Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval.
"Poverty is demoralizing,'' he said. "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."
Dylan, 67, reportedly shook hands with his interviewer and as he walked out the door, added, "You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future."
If indeed intended as an endorsement of America's first black major party presidential candidate, the statements were extraordinary for Dylan — from a cultural if not necessarily political standpoint.
Even at the height of his fame in the 1960s, when mass movements like the civil rights brigades and the anti-war establishment literally begged Dylan to lead them, the artist recoiled from taking sides.
Perennial Contrarian
The moody, mercurial Dylan has devoted his entire career to confounding expectations and constantly re-inventing himself, in an ever-nimble effort to dodge the endless ranks of ideologues who have been co-opting his songs for political purposes for decades.
As recently as 2004, he baffled the globe when he appeared in a 'Victoria's Secret' commercial with supermodel Adriana Lima and allowed the lingerie company to license his song "Lovesick."
The commercial — so surprising for an anti-establishment renegade like Dylan — led writer Mike Marqusee to ruefully note that "forty years ago [Dylan's] motto was 'Money doesn't talk, it swears …'
"Today, it's 'stretch-lined demi-bra with lace.'"
That same year, Dylan puzzled plenty and broke lefty hearts everywhere by admitting in his autobiography, decades after it would ever matter, that in the early 1960s "my favorite politician was [Republican Arizona Senator] Barry Goldwater,'' who Dylan said reminded him of Tom Mix, the cowboy actor who starred in hundreds of silent Westerns in the 1920s and 1930s.
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