In these days of a dying, raving and hallucinating empire, its best known poet, and a master at being anti-war, is accepting a Presidential Freedom Award from a cynical if affable, still, to many people, master of war. What is Dylan thinking? He and Obama are no strangers. On February 9, 2010, Dylan performed "The Times They Are A-Changing" at the White House. If I remember correctly, Dylan seemed a bit sullen that night, and he skipped the final, feel good session at the end, when all the other performers gathered, beaming, around our Chief Executive, the one who can order you or anyone locked up without trial, or shot, sans fanfare, because we're in a never ending war, remember? Dylan's old squeeze, Queen Jane, sang at the same soiree, and before crooning, Baez even gazed at Obama and cooed, "Mr. President, you are much loved." In our inverted country, grizzled peaceniks now serenade a war criminal.
To those who saw no irony that night, or now, is it because your gorgeous mind was too clogged up by Fox News, transfat, corn syrup or CNN to hold simultaneously two opposing concepts, such as peace and war, for example, and note that they didn't quite match, but were clashing? Or you, Bob, can't you tell that the battle outside that is a-ragin' is a-causa by this missile-firing and slow jamming man? Can't you see through his tiresome mask? It's all a joke, really, as when Obama warned that the Jonas Brothers would be zapped by Predator Drones should they come close to his daughters, but I doubt that the world is laughing.
The Wall Street Journal muses if this latest honor will inch Dylan closer to a Nobel Prize, as if that award still has much legitimacy after its Peace version was bestowed on Obama not even a year into his Presidency, when he hadn't a chance to really flaunt his bloody hands, though to the astute, there was already plenty of sick irony. The late, great Joe Bageant commented at the time, "The Nobel Committee awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to the very person who dropped the most bombs and killed the most poor people on the planet during that year." Maybe these Scandinavians just like phony Americans, for in the previous year, the Swedes gave a serial joker, the dismal Paul Krugman, its honor in Economic Sciences. (The Peace Prizes are chosen by the Norwegian Parliament.) These recent gaffs top a long list of errors. Still, it's a handsome pile of cash they give out, nearly $2 million now, so it's rather remarkable that two men have turned it down, Jean Paul Sartre because he rejected all official honors, and Le Duc Tho because North Vietnam was still waging war even after it had signed a peace agreement. At least the Nobel Peace Prize never went to Adolf Hitler, although Gertrude Stein, one of America's most celebrated poets, thought he should have received one. On May 6, 1934, Stein was quoted in the New York Times, "I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize, because he is removing all elements of contest and struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left elements, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace."
If driving out everything that conduces to activity leads to peace, then present day America would be Arcadia, but with the collapse of our manufacturing base, with many factories fleeing overseas for cheaper labor, a process that still continues, despite the propaganda, Americans are more restless than ever, as evidenced by the recent Tea Party and Occupy outbreaks, though far worse eruptions lay just ahead, no matter what jive masters like Krugman and Obama have to say. As for the foreign fronts, America is busy, as usual, with several overlapping wars.
Maybe Dylan will surprise us all by refusing to receive his Freedom Medal from such a war-monger, and break all protocols by ambushing his bloody host with, "Come you masters of war / You that build all the guns / You that build the death planes / You that build the big bombs / You that hide behind walls / You that hide behind desks / I just want you to know / I can see through your masks." But of course he won't do anything so outlandish. In accepting this award, Dylan will drape Obama in another layer of cool and glamorize him further, just as Katy Perry did to our grunts and guns in a recent music video.
Breaking up with her cheating boyfriend, Perry impulsively
joins the Marines. Instead of squirting a water gun at an arcade with her
ex-weasel, Perry is now seen firing an M-16. Instead of lounging in a tub under
the creepy eyes of her philandering a**hole, Perry is now wrestling underwater
with a fellow warrior-in-training. Instead of relying on a two-faced fuckface,
Perry is now surrounded by tried and true comrades. The video ends with Perry
singing ecstatically under a blue-hued flag, her new sky. Filmed at an actual Marines
Corps base camp, this video features 80 Marines as extras, as well as tanks and
helicopters, so it is a major collaboration between our entertainment and war
industries, something we've become quite used to by now, and something we'll
see again when Dylan grasps Obama's hand, looks into his eyes and smiles.
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