If you’re looking for the big link here, sorry. No comparison.
I read an interview with Bob Dylan today in the the August edition of Mojo Magazine. Bob had many things to say about his career, his songwriting and his “voice” in the songs that he says is always himself. You can read the whole interview here, but here are a couple of excerpts that I thought were worth passing around. The first is Bob’s impressions of Obama and how he doesn’t expect too much of him, because most all presidents don’t live up to their expectations:
What in his book would make you think he’d be a good politician?
Well nothing really. 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.
Do you think he’ll make a good president?
I have no idea. 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.
The second one jumped out at me because of the Nazi post last week and because I recently saw Inglourious Basterds, about the American team of Nazi hunters. (Quentin Tarantino’s best film in years. Go see it!)
Do you remember images of Hitler from growing up?
No, not growing up. He was dead by the time I was four or five. I never had a real understanding of that.
Never had an understanding of what?
How you take a failed landscape painter and turn him into a fanatical mad man who controls millions. That’s some trick. I mean the powers that created him must have been awesome.
Well, the social and economic conditions of the Weimar Republic were so different than now.
Yeah sure, looking back in hindsight, you can see that someone would have to take control. But still, it’s so perplexing. Like why him? You could see that the man’s a total mutt. No Aryan characteristics whatsoever. You couldn’t guess his ancestry. Brown hair, brown eyes, pasty complexion, no particular type of stature, Hitler mustache, raincoat, riding whip, the whole works. He knew something. He knew that people didn’t think. Look at the faces of the millions who worshipped him and you see that he inspired love. It’s scary and sad. The torch of the spoken word. They were glad to follow him anywhere, loyal to the bone. Then of course, he filled up the cemeteries with them.
Like Leonard Pitt said last week, Obama is no Nazi and definitely not a Hitler, so he won’t be exterminating the white race like so many of his deluded detractors want every fool to believe.
