Same ol’ same ol’: In Britain, a real estate investment firm named Brixton issued a report which quotes a verse from Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower to illustrate how tough the commercial property market is at the moment.

“The apocalyptic opening lines of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ seem to capture the beleaguered mindset of the UK commercial real estate market:

‘There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Businessmen they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth’”

[...]

“There is no real depth of evidence of willing buyers and sellers – the RICS Valuation Standards’ assumption. Financing remains difficult and sellers are reluctant to crystallise lower prices.

“If the ‘thieves’ are the funded or equity based opportunist buyers and the ‘jokers’ are the owners who won’t sell, there is no ‘way out’ of this impasse – yet.”

OK. But that doesn’t really warrant much comment. I think we’re fast reaching the point where inserting a quote of Dylan’s is no more remarkable than inserting a quote from Shakespeare. What’s worthy of comment, to me, is instead this bit of editorializing on the story from the Guardian:

Few bosses make reference to the lyrics of popular songs in their comments, despite many of them being members of what might be described as the rock’n'roll generation. Choosing Dylan, who is known for his antipathy to big business, is therefore a radical departure for the head of a FTSE 250 business.

Bob Dylan is known for his antipathy to big business?!? Tell that to certain fans who have started referring to “Dylan, Inc.” to characterize the very large number of commercial offerings and ventures that bear his name these days. From the many ways in which his music is packaged and sold, to all those limited edition “Drawn Blank” prints and his recent deal with Hohner, Dylan has enough fingers poking into enough pies to inspire envy from the board of, oh, say, Halliburton (or insert your own demonic symbol of devouring capitalism here). And the offhand way in which the writer above refers to Dylan’s supposed hostility to big business is even more mind-boggling when you remember that Bob has been involved in not just one but two high profile advertising campaigns in recent years: for Victoria’s Secret and for Cadillac. It just goes to show that it doesn’t matter what he does — to some Bob Dylan will always represent what they want him to represent, and nothing more.

On a somewhat similar note, there are these lines from a review of Dylan’s recent show in Connecticut:

Opening with the vintage “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” Dylan’s poetic lyrics shined on the landmark 1963 protest song “The Times They Are A-Changin” that can rival anything by Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger.

For only about the trillionth time: Can anybody tell me what is being protested by The Times They Are A-Changin’? And in the forty-five odd years that Dylan has been singing it, have we made much progress in overcoming whatever the “it” is that is being protested against? Is “the slow one” now fast; is “the first one” now last? Or is it at least getting close? I’d sure appreciate some enlightenment.

It reminds me that in the wake of Dylan’s show last week in Brooklyn, a number of reviewers remarked on his performance of both Masters Of War and John Brown, to the effect that he was commenting on the times and aiming these songs at the presumably sympathetic and anti-war New York audience. Well, I think that anyone who follows Dylan’s set lists knows that the only thing we can tell for sure is that Dylan plays whatever the heck he likes, whether he’s playing some theater in Croatia or a sports arena in Ohio. He doesn’t seem to alter the tunes to suit the audience. And those two songs are songs he likes to play. A look back at when he’s played them will reveal that he sings them in times of war and in times of what some people call peace; during times when the United States is governed by evil murderin’ Republicans and during times when the United States is governed by saintly, peace-loving Democrats. And I’ve written about the various things that I think are going on in the song John Brown on another occasion. As for Masters Of War: Dylan himself has famously said it has nothing to with being anti-war as such, and you can make of all that what you will (that whole argument has been covered too often here, although I do like this story on the subject).

Anyhow, in the case of these continuing mainstream media characterizations of Bob Dylan as a raging anti-war, big-business-hating, anti-establishment ne’er do well, it’s a situation where the times could certainly use some changin’, but, as usual, we are best advised not to hold our breath.

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Speaking of harmonicas, don’t miss the quite funny and to-the-point exclusive interview with Dylan on the Hohner website.

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Election note: The Saddleback forum on Saturday night was clearly a huge event in the framing of this presidential election — bigger than most people anticipated. In particular, McCain’s performance gave many in the conservative base reasons to want to go out and vote for him, rather than just going out and voting against the Democratic party’s nominee. One of the defining questions was on abortion, and Obama’s answer, saying that when a baby obtains human rights was “above my pay grade”, has inspired an avalanche of bad reviews. See Wizbang’s dissection, see Keith Pavlischek’s pithy response; or listen to Mark Hemingway speaking for millions at the Corner:

That spectacularly inept metaphor is going to haunt Obama throughout the rest of the campaign. News flash: There’s not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States. If you can’t solve every problem and are humble about it, that’s fine — but you can’t get away with being unsure about the most defining moral issue in politics.

There are ways to evade answering Rick Warren’s question about when human life begins. Other Democrats do evade it, more artfully if not any more honestly. But there is nothing artful about saying it is “above my pay grade,” and such a lousy answer provides additional evidence as to why Obama may be very justifiably nervous about debating John McCain.

No sooner, however, had this groundswell of pro-McCain feeling erupted from the “Christian-right” base than his campaign started putting out feelers about how he might pick a pro-choice VP. At the time of writing, it looks like the feelers have been retracted, appropriately chastened by the reaction. However, I have no idea what is really going to happen on this issue. If there’s anything that we can be sure about when it comes to John McCain, it’s that he has a little bit of the devil in him, and he would probably really enjoy surprising people with his VP pick. Six months ago, I wrote in this space that McCain’s VP pick could be the deal-breaker or the deal-maker, and I haven’t changed my opinion one iota. With McCain’s age, the possibility that his VP pick could be at the head of the ticket in 2012 is a very strong one, and it figures high in the minds of many conservative voters. McCain, with his historic squishiness on various issues, is one thing, for four years in the presidency. But if he seems to be trying to redefine the Republican party by picking someone further to the alleged center than he is, with a view to that person being his successor, then there will be big trouble. Saddleback or no Saddleback. Saying the right words is good. But doing the right thing is of overwhelming importance.

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I expect to be mostly out of circulation for the next six or seven days — returning in time for the must-see-TV that will likely be the Democratic convention. But who knows?

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