On my comment in an earlier post about only ever being able to use Bob Dylan’s Winterlude before in my Christmas music party tapes and CDs, thanks to Jerry for this e-mail:

Regarding using Dylan songs on your own Christmas compilations, how about Dylan’s recording of ‘Arthur McBride” which is a Christmas song? Christmas is mentioned in “Three Angels.” How about Dylan’s recording of “Pretty Boy Floyd” in which the outlaw offers money for Christmas dinners for the families on relief?’

Touché. Jerry must have the best Christmas compilations ever.

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Fred at Dreamtime interrupts his vacation to post on Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart. He reports that (as discovered by someone with the name zimmy1 in an Expecting Rain forum) the cover picture for the album is a “royalty-free ‘Victorian Holiday Illustration of a Horse-Drawn Sleigh’ [available] at Veer Photography.” (And Amazon.com is now offering a “deluxe-edition” of the CD that will include greeting cards with that image.)

Fred also thoroughly addresses the nutty story that has been out there in the news for some days now, regarding Bob Dylan being “in talks with car companies” to provide the voice for the their GPS navigation systems. It’s amazing that Bob Dylan makes a joke on Theme Time Radio Hour, and many months later someone in the media picks up on it, takes it seriously, and it spawns countless copy-cat stories.

However, I do wonder, now that it’s been so widely reported, whether it will actually promote a genuine bidding war for Dylan’s services in this regard and the whole thing will then come true.

One thing is clear: It’s a crazy world, and Dylan isn’t helping matters at all.

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Steve writes to take issue with some of my reasoning about statistics from the previous post:

I don’t know that the number [35 million] is correct or not, but you mix up two things:

“35 million people in this country alone — 12 million of those children — often go to bed hungry and wake up each morning unsure of where their next meal is coming from.” [statement attributed to Dylan in Christmas album press release.]

Then you say:

“And the worst thing of all is to believe, for instance, a figure about homelessness which is being purveyed by an organization or agency whose raison d’être is providing services for the homeless. ”

A couple curious things about this sentence. First, by the same token we should be skeptical about number of say, crimes, that come from police, or fires that come from fire departments. Or I guess that’ s the ‘worst thing of all,’ though I can think of worse things.

Second, though, and more to the point, is that “often go to bed hungry” does not equal “homeless.” These are two very different things, and I’d guess that the homeless are a subset of those who often (not always) go to bed hungry.

I know you caveated this later, but I just want to keep the discussion of the number on an apples vs apples basis.

Well, it might not be the most artful thing I’ve ever written, but let me quote the whole passage in question.

Anyone who swallows whole a number just because they hear it stated somewhere is setting himself up to be misled and manipulated by people with determined agendas. It happens every day. And the worst thing of all is to believe, for instance, a figure about homelessness which is being purveyed by an organization or agency whose raison d’être is providing services for the homeless. Money can corrupt, and this is no less true in the area of social services and non-profit organizations that receive government funding. There is no incentive among those in the business of providing solutions to problems to minimize their characterization of those problems. Quite the opposite, obviously.

My reference to homelessness numbers was by way of a “for instance” (which is why I preceded it with “for instance”). Of-course Steve is correct that homelessness is indeed an issue distinct from hunger. There are the relatively well-fed homeless and there are people short of food but with roofs over their heads. I might have instead cited as an example the idea of taking the word of defense contractor on what the greatest threats are to the nation’s security, when that contractor just happens to be selling a weapons-system to address those particular threats. The point I was trying to make is that one explanation for distorted statistics is that the people supplying them have a vested interest in persuading people to give them money, in order to better take care of the problem illustrated by their statistics.

I think, however, that it doesn’t work in exactly the same way when it comes to the numbers of crimes reported by police. Certainly, with an urban police department, it does them no favors if they exaggerate the level of crime in the city, because that only means that they are doing a lousy job. The commissioner might get fired as a result. On the other hand, police departments might indeed be motivated to minimize certain crime statistics sometimes, to make the commissioner or the mayor look good.

I suppose a fire department might benefit by exaggerating the numbers of fires, because it would seem to demand more fire stations and firemen. It does seem like something that would be very hard to do, though, and very easy to get caught doing. Fires get a lot of attention and documentation.

Anyway, if in the case of the police, less crime is generally the thing that earns the plaudits and the rewards (at least for the people at the top), then in the case of a social service provider — government or non-profit — it is usually a number indicating more people needing services that is going to get the attention and possibly the further investment.

My overall point was that numbers should never be swallowed whole just because they’ve been stated, and this is especially true when those stating them have something to gain from the acceptance of those numbers. The method by which the numbers have been arrived at should always be closely examined. There’s obviously a reason for the oft-repeated line about “lies, damned lies and statistics.”

I don’t know how accurate is that number of 35 million. (I note that it apparently dates from 2007 and gets some critical analysis at this link, among other places.)

That said, and as I concluded in that previous post, it is beyond question that there are plenty of people who need help obtaining sufficient food for themselves or for their children — most especially, although not exclusively, under the present conditions — and Bob Dylan’s decision to donate his profits from Christmas In the Heart to a charity that provides help to the hungry is both a great thing and a beautiful example to set.

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