A columnist with The Free Market News Network, Corp, reports that Senator Jim Webb (D-Va), is the new Bob Dylan. Or something like that.

According to historians William Straus and Neil Howe, each historical post-war period is divided into four generations and last 80 years, with each generation having a 20-year run. Each generation also has its own gods, heroes, goddesses and Great Mothers, all starting with Coyote Trickster. I am 60 years old and a product of the Second Generation. The Coyote Trickster of my generation was Bob Dylan. It is said that the generations changed from first to second one afternoon in Newport when Dylan changed from a wooden guitar to an electric guitar in the region of 1965. Bob Dylan changed everything, but in particular, he changed the gods who would follow. Paul McCartney said that The Beatles enjoyed writing teen age love songs, but when they first heard Bob Dylan, they then desired to be artists. Today, on mainstream crappy radio and TV ads it is impossible not to see the influence of Dylan, Magical Animal and Coyote Trickster of Generation Two almost everywhere - hair, garments, attitude, tone of voice.

We enter now the Fourth Generation, the most critical generation, according to Strauss and Howe in their most provocative book, “The Fourth Turning.” Jim Webb will be Coyote Trickster to this new generation.

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His speech in response to Bush’s State of the Union was one of the greatest speeches I have ever heard. It portends something new and astonishing happening within the Democratic Party. With it, the rising political generation has crossed the river to the new country. I think Old School senses it right away, as John Kerry might have when he decided not to run the next day. Rightly so. The season has changed.

Hearing Webb’s speech the other night commentator Mark Shields said “A star is born.” It is a star which will rise with a new generation and the values Webb brings to politics will become the values of that generation, as always, in opposition to the generations which came before. Marcos yesterday claimed Webb as his own; that is, as the product of the net roots. Rightly so. It doesn’t matter if the new culture in the Democratic Party finds success in 2008. Perhaps it will take longer for the old culture to fall away. But there is now no question that what is new in the Democratic Party will rise now with Jim Webb and a generation will rise with it which will bring new values to the Party and to the country over the next 20 years.

Well, another crown of thorns is lifted from Bob Dylan’s head and planted on somebody else’s noggin — he will be pleased at that. Although I’d never heard of this “coyote trickster” stuff before, I’m sure that he got a lot of mail about it down through the years.

And we’ve known for some time that Shepard Smith of Fox News is “the new spokesman of a generation.” So, there’s not much left for Bob but the “song and dance man” title, and that must suit him fine.

I’m going out to buy some Jim Webb records just as fast as I can.

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