Joseph Ellis, in a review in the New York Times of Harvey J. Kaye’s Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, refers to that author’s "roll call of the American left, who drew inspiration from Paine’s uncompromising convictions." The list of eleven names ends with one Bob Dylan. Though the review is somewhat critical of the book as a whole, Ellis’s reiteration of the author’s categorization of those figures is unqualified by any tone of questioning. And it is symbolic of the still pervasive premise of so many media stories on Bob Dylan; that premise being that he and his body of work belongs without question to the left. (And it is of-course the intense irritation brought on by the seemingly unstoppable repetition of such untruths that inspired this little website.)

In this particular article, the absurdity of labeling Dylan in this way becomes clear (albeit not to the writer) in the very next paragraph.

Oddly enough, however, over the past 30 years Paine’s chief fans have appeared within the conservative wing of the Republican Party, making Paine, like Jefferson, the proverbial man for all seasons. Though weird, and surely not the legacy Kaye has in mind, the Goldwater-Reagan-Gingrich persuasion has a plausible claim on the libertarian side of the Paine legacy, which is deeply suspicious of all forms of consolidated political power and views government as ”them” rather than ”us.” Paul Wolfowitz would also be able to cite Paine in support of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy, since Paine believed that democratic values were both universal and self-enacting. History makes strange bedfellows.

Indeed - strange bedfellows. Particularly strange when one of the conservative Republicans that Ellis just listed (Goldwater) was described as "my favorite politician" on page 283 of Chronicles - the memoir written by that well known pillar of the American left (as Ellis and Kaye would have us believe): Bob Dylan.

In the end, Ellis disagrees with what he sees as Kaye’s attempt to co-opt Paine for the causes of 21st century American leftism. That such an attempt would be made demonstrates, if nothing else, the appetite that people retain for claiming that great thinkers, now dead, would agree with them - if only they could be resuscitated and hustled to a microphone.

In terms of my concerns in this space relevant to Dylan, it’s just interesting to note how many people didn’t bother waiting for him to die before trying to submerge the genius of his greatest songs beneath the mud of their own political predilections. His own constant rejection of such attempts has made little impression - clearly, as underlined by the kind of casual falsehood about his politics that appeared in Ellis’s review in the Times, and appears regularly elsewhere.

* * *

It’s worth pausing to note a couple of other intersections of Thomas Paine with Bob Dylan, just for the record.

In 1963, the liberal "Emergency Civil Liberties Committee" presented Bob Dylan with their "Tom Paine Award," at a December 13th fund raising dinner. The young Dylan showed up to accept the award, and gave a rambling "acceptance" speech that made much of all the bald heads in the audience, belittled the very idea of political categorizations ("There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking of anything trivial such as politics."), and came to a stop amidst boos and hisses shortly after he remarked that he saw some of himself in Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK had been assassinated in Dealey Plaza a mere 3 weeks previous).

It would be unfair - as far as this writer concerned - to read too much into Dylan’s specific words that night; other than recognizing that they reflected a young and extremely talented artist who was beginning to feel the pinch of the talons wielded by those who desired to own him. It’s noteworthy, I think, that most artists - hardly over a year into their recording career - would be pretty happy to be accepting accolades and praise from whoever was willing to listen to them and put them atop a pedestal. Dylan, at 22 years of age, and far from having made it to superstardom, was already in turmoil over the question of what it meant for him to accept praise from people with an agenda of their own. If you accept the laurel, are you accepting the title also?

Six months later, Nat Hentoff wrote a profile of Dylan for the New Yorker. Dylan made remarks including the following about the Tom Paine Award dinner (as reproduced in No Direction Home by Robert Shelton):

I’m not part of no Movement. If I was, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else but be "in the Movement." I just can’t have people sit around and make rules for me …. Here were these people who’d been all involved with the left in the Thirties, and now they were supporting civil-rights drives. That’s groovy, but they also had minks and jewels, and it was like they were giving their money out of guilt. I got up to leave, and they followed me out and caught me …. I was supposed to be a nice cat. I was supposed to say, "I appreciate your award and I’m a great singer and I’m a great believer in liberals, and you buy my records and I’ll support your cause!" … I tell you, I’m never going to have anything to do with any political organization again in my life. I might help a friend if he were campaigning for office. But I’m not going to be part of any organization.

The Emergency Civil Liberties Committee ultimately billed Dylan for $6000 (the sum they felt he had cost them - in donations - due to his ungracious speech). Shelton does not report that Dylan ever paid up.

Four years later on brings the other notable intersection of Paine with Dylan - the most obvious one, perhaps. In the song As I Went Out One Morning (on John Wesley Harding), the first verse goes thusly:

As I went out one morning
To breathe the air around Tom Paine’s,
I spied the fairest damsel
That ever did walk in chains.
I offer’d her my hand,
She took me by the arm.
I knew that very instant,
She meant to do me harm.

The damsel is trying to tempt the singer:

"I beg you, sir," she pleaded
From the corners of her mouth,
"I will secretly accept you
And together we’ll fly south."

And the denouement is provided by none other than Mr. P.:

Just then Tom Paine, himself,
Came running from across the field,
Shouting at this lovely girl
And commanding her to yield.
And as she was letting go her grip,
Up Tom Paine did run,
"I’m sorry, sir," he said to me,
"I’m sorry for what she’s done."

Is it a parable in itself inspired by that night in 1963, and one that shines a light on the falsity of claiming the dead’s approval for one’s causes-de-jour?

RWB reports; you decide.

* * *

Some readers -especially internationally - may not be familiar with who Tom Paine is to begin with. I’m no historian, but you could start here, with the "air around Tom Paine’s;" literally. He achieved a place in history in 1776, with his pamphlet Common Sense, which is widely credi
ted with affecting the mood of the country at the time and helping to make the sacrifices of the U.S. War of Independence a feasible proposition.

With that war not going so well, he wrote further pamphlets titled The American Crisis, the first of which begins with the famous line: "These are the times which try men’s souls." They have been credited with inspiring the troops and populace alike.

Later, in the midst of the French Revolution, came The Rights Of Man - writing that was and is not without controversy, but is startlingly prescient in many ways.

For controversy, however, nothing could surpass his work The Age Of Reason - commonly characterized as an attack on religion - which resulted in his complete fall from grace in the popular opinion of the time.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Well … this might as well end with a Dylan quote. From the Biograph interview in 1985:

That lie about everybody having their own truth inside of them has done a lot of damage and made people crazy.

(Bob is right!)

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