The Voice of America correspondent (Katherine Cole) who apparently used, in her piece yesterday, the now retracted quote from the Christian Science Monitor in which Bob Dylan supposedly called himself an atheist, has replied to my e-mail query and says, “I will do a bit of checking, and then change where needed.” Her quick reply is very much appreciated. Clearly, assuming that I’m correct in my judgment as to what happened here, she’s guilty of nothing more than thinking that the CSM had its facts straight in the first place (original post on all that here). That’s the tragedy of the initial misquote — or, more specifically, the misattribution of something Jerry Wexler said about himself in 1979 to Bob Dylan in 2003.

It has crossed my mind that challenging the reappearances of this mistake is going to become my life’s work. Now all I need is to get a grant from someone to fund the effort. ExxonMobil, are you listening?

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Update 09/29/2006: Voice of America story corrected as of today

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Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Correction issued by Christian Science Monitor (in print edition, at this point)
• Correction now made to the Christian Science Monitor online as well
• Jerry Wexler dies at age 91