(Or something like that.)

Came across this article from an online marketing industry magazine today, based, apparently, in South Africa – “Bob Dylan: The Great Researcher?” It basically is a rundown of the ideas of someone named Gordon Cook, who is apparently head of a school in South Africa that teaches marketing or branding or communications or some such goop.

Beginning to read the article, it seemed at first to be an eccentric but at least potentially interesting angle on Dylan’s work. Mr. Cook has pointed to various elements of Dylan’s artistic nature that would be helpful to a researcher, including:

Dylan is an outsider and a great research mind is often outside of what he or she has to research. He stayed an observer and is not obsessed with being a celebrity.

He has incredible perceptual and awareness boundaries. “All research has to start off from a point of view. This is often too narrow, but Dylan had the ability to have a very huge awareness boundary.”

Fine and dandy. Then, out of nowhere, comes this:

His philosophic platform recognises the dignity of all humans. “I wish I could hold George Bush down and thrash him with Bob Dylan songs until he either agrees to stop being an idiot or resigns,” says Cook.

OK. Well … number one: If there’s any Bob Dylan song that Cook could argue would cause George W. Bush to “stop being an idiot” or resign, I would wager that I could write a thoroughly persuasive essay that would demonstrate how that song could in fact provide sustenance and encouragement to George W. Bush, and in fact would be more likely to provide such encouragement to him. Of this I have no doubt. (And by the way, Dubya has of-course heard plenty of Bob Dylan songs in his life, not least because his wife is well known to be a big Dylan fan.)

Number two is a question: What is it that causes someone who presumably wants to be taken seriously by other people, in speaking about a non-political subject, to abruptly inject their extreme personal politics into the discussion? Why this total disregard for the consequences of alienating those who don’t share that politics? It comes across as an arrogance, but is probably at the same time an insecurity. The speaker wants to reassure himself that his opinions are completely true and unquestionable, so he throws them out there, counting on no one to respond, so he can take that as evidence of the rightness of his beliefs, and the fact that he’s surrounded by like-minded intelligent thinkers. “I hate that idiot George Bush — don’t we all? Aren’t we just so enlightened and wonderful because all agree that George Bush is so incredibly stupid?”

The writer of the article chooses to end with a quote from a Dylan song:

So researchers:

“Are you thinking for yourself
Or are you following the pack?

Are you ready, hope you’re ready.
Are you ready?”

I think that’s a song Dubya would probably dig pretty well. He doesn’t follow “the pack” of intellectual elites who would have him aim for kudos from the likes of the NY Times and the Nobel Prize committee; instead, he thinks for himself and does his job, trying to keep the well-being of the United States as his foremost concern. He also at least tries to humble himself before the will of God, which after all is what this song is about. There’s some other verses that Dubya would clearly appreciate too:

Are you ready to meet Jesus?
Are you where you ought to be?
Will He know you when He sees you
Or will He say, “Depart from Me”?

Are you ready for the judgment?
Are you ready for that terrible swift sword?
Are you ready for Armageddon?
Are you ready for the day of the Lord?

Yeah! Bring it on!

Sounds perfect for the presidential iPod, if you ask me.

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