Is it just me

[onesonek]

Or is it a bit more than bizarre, that one of the Presidential Medals of Freedom went to Bob Dylan? To me, that seems like a slap to the Nam Vet's.

[waksupi]

I guess I don't recall any overt actions of Dylan's involvement with the 60's protests. I will say he is one of the best lyricists around. Jack of Hearts is a good example.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/lilyrosemaryandthejackofhearts.html

An equally deserving musical artist would be Doc Watson, who passed away today.

[MtGun44]

I never associated him with the anti-war movement particularly. I like many of his songs.
He never ran his mouth about left wing politics or anything that I ever heard.

+1 on Doc Watson.

Bill

[onesonek]

I do like his music, just seem to recall he did protest to some dedree, however I don't recall any particulars either. Quite possibily an over statement on my original thoughts,,,memory playing tricks again???

[462]

"Jack of Hearts" is an interesting tale, and has been a favorite for many years.

No, I don't associate him with any radical anti-war movement, neither. Subtle, perhaps, but there was a lot of that in the music of the time. I don't take his receiving the medal as a slap in the face. Heck, I wanted the war to end, too, back in '68-'69, so I could come home.

Now, Hanoi Jane, that's another matter entirely.

[Bent Ramrod]

Bobby kept thwarting Joan Baez' and the other leftie folkies' efforts to make him "the voice of the Revolution." Their interpretation of his lyrics was not necessarily his own; he just wanted to be successful and support his family. He was not "into the Movement," as the saying went back then, beyond wanting to sell them his records. For this, he was in constant trouble with the Folk Music Establishment of the time. They thought he was "uncooperative" and "sullen," and when he electrified his band, they just about had a fit over how he had "sold out." Unfortunately for them, his songs still had that Sixties currency, and the audiences he attracted were bigger than ever, so they had to plug in and rock too.

[Thumbcocker]

I saw a documentary on him where Joan Biaz was interviewed. The gist was that lots of folks wanted him to be political but he was totally into his music and almost apolitical.

[runfiverun]

never understood a word he said.
cept on one song,and it hit pretty hard at the time.
i think bruce springsteen learned his lyrical mumblings from him.

[MtGun44]

I remember reading about a relatively recent interview (rare) where they asked him what he
was aspiring to with his music. The answer was something like "I just wanted a normal
little house with a white picket fence."

Here is a 2004 interview:

Dylan pined for picket fence and roses


New York
September 28, 2004

Bob Dylan's long-awaited memoir presents him as an unwilling rebel.


Music legend Bob Dylan reveals in his long-awaited memoir that, contrary to his image as an icon of 1960s counterculture,
he was an unwilling rebel who dreamed of a simple nine-to-five existence.

While a generation of hippies and counterculture rebels were inspired by Dylan's voice and music, the man behind the lyrics
reveals he felt a prisoner in his own home where he kept a Colt pistol and Winchester rifle in fear of "rogue radicals".

Excerpts from Dylan's memoir, Chronicles, are published in Newsweek magazine, which is on newsstands today, with a
rare interview with the singer held in an unidentified Midwest motel room.

Dylan, 63, appears on the cover of Newsweek wearing a pearl-coloured cowboy hat and sporting a thin moustache.

The excerpts are likely to surprise, if not shock, many Dylan loyalists.

"The world was absurd . . . I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed
to be the voice of," Dylan says.

"I was fantasising about a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses
in the backyard.

"Road maps to our homestead must have been posted in all 50 states for gangs of drop-outs and druggies.

"I wanted to set fire to these people," Dylan recollects, saying the hordes of fans who turned up at his family home in
Woodstock and walked over his roof or tried to break in drove him and his family to seek refuge in New York.

"We moved to New York for a while in hopes to demolish my identity, but it wasn't any better there. It was even worse.
The neighbours hated us."

Although the memoir presents Dylan as an unwilling son of the '60s, Newsweek reports it is thin on landmarks in the
singer's life: "His famous 1966 motorcycle accident gets a single sentence, and there's nothing about his 1977 divorce,
his 1978 conversion to evangelical Christianity or the origin and the making of such masterworks as Blood on the
Tracks (1975), Slow Train Coming (1979), Infidels (1983)."

Dylan says he felt like a mannequin in a shop window as the '60s roared past. He says his family was the most important
part of his life and that "even the horrifying news items of the day, the gunning down of the Kennedys, King, Malcolm X . . .
I didn't see them as leaders being shot down, but rather as fathers whose families had been left wounded".

He blames his anointment as "the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent" largely on the press,
which labelled him as the spokesman for a generation. "The big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece,
spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs," he says.

"I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of."

Dylan acknowledges that his lyrics "struck nerves that had never been struck before", but says he grated at the way his
songs' "meanings (were) subverted into polemics".

As time passed and the '60s receded, Dylan says he found happiness and inner peace.

"In my real life, I got to do the things that I love the best . . . Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids
to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing . . . I was living on record royalties."


Bill

[Blacksmith]

The highest civilian award in the United States. It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors".

I think he qualifies for cultural reasons and as a Viet Nam era vet I don't have a problem with that.

[onesonek]

Ok, good to know those that were in Nam feel this way. It just struck me odd when I heard of it.
But again,,,Thanks to All that were there, or Served elsewhere for that matter!!!

[FISH4BUGS]

....and I still don't like it now.
Different strokes for different folks.
Never was a folkie......my tastes ran more towards R&B, complete with horn sections and Hammond B3's.

[Finster101]

He writes some really great songs. He just shouldn't sing them. JMO

[WILCO]

He writes some really great songs.

"Wanted Man" with Johnny Cash was a great one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz2gc5ZtmD0&feature=related

[nelsonted1]

President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”

Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela. H/T: Gateway Pundit

[WILCO]

President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”

Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela. H/T: Gateway Pundit

Yep. They're not hiding in the shadows anymore.

[leftiye]

We were all peceniks in the Nam. I have an indellible picture in my mind of a door gunner in a Huey flying off from the flight line giving me the peace sign. Green machine, lifers, "Blank it, it don't mean nothin' , drive on".

[Jammer Six]

No award of any medal to any person for any reason detracts in any way from a veteran.

[Lee]

At least Blak Omummer didn't give one to Jane Fonda. Or has that already happened???

[Moondawg]

I thought it was even more looney that one of the awards went to a communist fellow traveler, marxist and radical labor activist.