If you search Google News with the string [ "Bob Dylan" "Jewish atheist" ] you receive two results, as of this morning. One is the cached version of the original and erroneous Christian Science Monitor story by Jim Sullivan of September 1st, 2006. Click on it and you won’t find the mis-quote — though you will find a note from the editor referring to its removal. The other result is the current story on Voice of America, still uncorrected as of right now although the writer of the piece (Katherine Cole) has indicated in an e-mail received three days ago that a correction was run on the VOA “in-house wire.”

Original post relevant to the Christian Science Monitor mistake is here.

Note: if you search plain Google (not Google News) for [ "Bob Dylan" "Jewish atheist" ] you will receive a whole ton of results. If you click on and read them, you’ll find that virtually all are references to Jerry Wexler’s remarks to Dylan in 1979. One exception that I found is this Wikipedia entry, which uses the erroneous CSM quote and footnotes it to the (now corrected) CSM article. Another example of how this thing continues to spread in viral fashion. [update 09/27/2006: This Wikipedia entry now appears to have been corrected.]

Time passes slowly up here in the daylight,
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right,
Like the red rose of summer that blooms in the day,
Time passes slowly and fades away.

…

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

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