Be honest: there’s a headline you never thought you’d see.

As some may have read elsewhere, there’s a kind of dumb story doing the rounds, about how a neighbor of Bob Dylan’s property in Malibu, California has been complaining that a “port-a-potty” on Dylan’s grounds is ruining his life and his family’s life, with its “hazardous, carcinogenic chemical” smells.

Well, the story was just dumb enough, and symbolic enough, to catch the attention of America’s truth-detector, that radio impresario and genuine phenomenon that is Rush Limbaugh. Sometime in the past season, if I’m not mistaken, Bob mentioned Rush on his radio program, “Theme Time Radio Hour,” so maybe it’s only fitting that Rush returned the favor. Transcript at Limbaugh’s website:

RUSH: Here’s a story out of Malibu, California, where Bob Dylan has a compound, and some of his neighbors are charging in “an increasingly odoriferous dispute” that he’s got a portable toilet outside the house, and the odors coming from this estate, which is Point Dume, are getting to the point that they’re intolerable.

“Residents contend that the nighttime sea breeze sends a noxious odor from a portable toilet on Dylan’s property wafting into their homes. The stench has made members of one family ill and forced them to abandon their bedrooms on warm nights, they say. For more than six months, Dylan, 67, has ignored their complaints and their pleas to remove the outhouse, the downwind neighbors say. ‘It’s a scandal — ‘Mr. Civil Rights’ is killing our civil rights,’ said David Emminger, whose home is directly behind the toilet…” Now, the outhouse… You may be wondering, “What the hell is Bob Dylan doing with an outhouse?” Isn’t he an environmentalist wacko, and isn’t this how environmentalists want us all to live: doing all this au naturel out in the woods and so forth? They don’t like this in Malibu? They probably wouldn’t like this in Marin County, either.

Well, get this. The outhouse is “intended for use by [Dylan's] employees.” That’s what it says here in the Los Angeles Times. David Emminger, who lives in his house near the outhouse, “and his wife have installed five industrial-sized fans in their frontyard (sic).” Five fans in the front yard in Malibu! I wonder if they got permits for this or if they themselves are in violation. They’ve “installed five industrial-sized fans in their frontyard in an attempt to blow the [stench from the outhouse] back at Dylan.” Now, folks, we are talking major footprints here! We have an outhouse footprint. Now we got five fans across the street pushing the odor back at Dylan’s house — and once again: “Guards who staff a security shack near the edge of Dylan’s compound around the clock are among those who utilize the” outhouse.

“‘It started in September. I’d go into the frontyard and get nauseous,’ said Cindy Emminger, 42. ‘I couldn’t figure out at first where the smell was coming from.’ Her 8-year-old son, David Jr., was sickened by the stench. Then she became ill too. ‘We both have allergies and are sensitive to chemicals,’ she said. ‘I finally noticed that they had moved the port-a-potty directly in front of my front door.’” So the Dylans were not sitting idly by. As the neighbors complained about the stench, the Dylan’s apparently moved the outhouse closer to the complaining family’s house. Now, you might be asking, “What in the world…? Bob Dylan, this is a compound he has out there, and his peon staff, apparently, his indentured servants have to use an outhouse?”

Ladies and gentlemen, anybody with an estate, anybody with a compound knows that you have an enclosed and air-conditioned bathroom for the servants, for the gardeners, for the various vendors and contractors who come to maintain your property and keep it beautiful. I’ve never heard of this! The only time you have outhouses out there is during construction, when no plumbing has yet been installed. How the hell can Malibu let this happen?

Well, anyone who knows Rush Limbaugh knows that this is a story he basically laughed all the way through, using it to show up multiple levels of hypocrisy. It’s all in fun. The one respect in which he erred was in his apparent presumption that Bob Dylan is “an environmentalist wacko,” and that this is one level of the hypocrisy at work here. There is no evidence for that, Maha-Rushie. None at all. You, who constantly make fun of the “drive-by media” should, of all people, not take your image of Bob Dylan from those self-same sources. Bob Dylan has done commercials for Cadillac, in which he gleefully drives a gas-guzzling Escalade (General Motors has also been a sponsor of the Rush Limbaugh show). Bob Dylan has never endorsed the global warming big lie (quite the contrary) and has never spoken out against the right of anyone to put a port-a-potty anywhere on their property where they’d like to put it. Put simply, he has never been the spokesperson or marionette of the Left that some would have you believe that he is. As America’s truth-detector, Rush really ought to get his head straightened out on this point.

Other than that, though, Rush’s take on the story is right-on. I especially love how he focuses on the carbon footprint left by the five industrial-size fans that the neighbors are using to blow the chemical air back at the bard of Hibbing.

By the way, since Bob Dylan has a place in Minnesota, a place in New York City, a house in the Scottish Highlands, and spends months of the year touring with his band, does anyone even know the last time he was in Malibu, or how much time he’s spent there recently? I wouldn’t hazard any guess. I would bet that he wasn’t even aware of this alleged controversy over the port-a-potty, until, that is, it became big international news.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me all that much if he heard about it for the first time on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show this afternoon.

…

Addendum: By the way, I don’t have anything against Dylan’s neighbors. They may have a legitimate beef. It would be nice if such a thing could be resolved in a neighborly fashion, and hopefully it ultimately will. I am sure, as alluded to above, that Bob’s inevitable long periods of absenteeism have something to do with this little molehill becoming a mountain. The presence of the five industrial-size fans does lead one to suspect the neighbors are given to indulging in drama, but what is most ridiculous, overall, is that a story of a controversy between two neighbors over a porta-potty has become international news …

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