[lbo-talk] Bob Again (Was National Review's Top 50 )

[Louis Kontos]

one doesn't have to be a right-winger to say these things. one can  
even be a professor, even a left wing professor, and say the same or  
worse about academia. But I don't agree with Doug's interpretation of  
the/any meaning of the lyrics (excerpted below). Liberty is not just  
a right wing slogan. Moreover, to condemn someone for 'spouting out'  
that liberty is 'just equality in school', i.e., someone with  
authority, someone learned, who is dismissing the hopes and dreams of  
the less learned and less cynical, in relation to this concept --  
liberty -- is to condemn pretension, hypocrisy, reactionary impulse,  
among other things. It is the kind of condemnation someone can make  
before buying into the/any system. Hence, being 'younger' now, means  
being more idealistic and less comprised.  (I could be wrong, of  
course, in my interpretation, but the idea that there is something  
'obviously' reactionary in this song is too far out, over the top,  
for me to grasp.) Dylan, in this song, is 'using ideas' as his 'map'.  
Ideas matter, not what professors say about them -- unless they too  
have some ideas that anybody should care about. 'Ideas' in the  
university, for Dylan, amount to the same thing as 'beauty' in the  
museum -- a form of containment and death -- where 'infinity goes up  
on trial' and where old people -- even an 'old folks home' (in the  
college) -- gather. This stuff is reactionary? You must be joking.
Louis

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

On May 28, 2006, at 11:25 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:


>
> On May 28, 2006, at 2:08 PM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>> In my right-wing days, we thought that
>>> Dylan's "My Back
>>>> Pages" was a great conservative song
>>> <http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/
>>>> backpages.html>:
>>
>> Of course it is really more of an anti-political song
>
> I'm always amazed and amused by how Dylan fans - including my  
> father-in-law - don't want to admit to the right-wing content of  
> the song. The way he spits out "equality in school" is not  
> apolitical - it's from someone who hates the very idea. "Liberty"  
> is a very right-wing word. The contempt for professors and  
> abstractions is right out of American right-wing populism.
>
> National Review isn't entirely wrong about this. There's a deep  
> streak of American individualism in rock and roll, and it's not  
> just Ted Nugent. I love the Kinks (does anyone listen to them  
> anymore?), but their politics are often pretty right wing. The anti- 
> disco moment of punk was full of racism and homophobia. Not in  
> every case, for sure, but it's there.
>
> Doug
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