On his music blog, Jeff Neilsen posts twenty-two different versions of Bob Dylan’s When The Ship Comes In. Two of them are by Bob himself; the rest are a variety of cover versions.

In the accompanying post, Jeff compares yours-truly RWB right here to Jann Wenner (the founder and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, and the owner of Us Weekly and Men’s Journal). Specifically, he invites readers to “witness the depths” that Jann and I “will plumb to twist Dylan’s every twitch into a signal of allegiance to their own political vision.”

I suppose I ought to be hurt to be accused of twisting every twitch of Dylan’s to conform to my politics, but I’m way too tickled by the comparison to Mr. Wenner to get annoyed. Yes, we’re like two sides of the same coin, Jann and I: him with his magazine and media empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and me sitting pretty atop the priceless domain name of rightwingbob.com. I’d just like to be clear: I’ll debate Wenner any time, anywhere, anyhow. In fact, I think we should travel the country and do town hall meetings; let America decide who’s right and who’s wrong. It’ll have to be on Jann’s private jet, I’m afraid, as the muffler recently fell off of mine and I’m a bit too strapped at the moment to get it fixed.

I do dispute –for the record — the allegation that in my writing I’ve distorted Dylan’s work to suit my politics. The comparison to Jann Wenner, however, genuinely made my day, and I offer my sincere thanks for that.

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