ADVENTURES IN PARAPHRASE: Dylan may have said it worst!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2022

We take a one-day hike: Long ago and far away, Robert Zimmerman may have said it worst.

The singer-songwriter was hiding behind his stage name, "Bob Dylan." His comment came right at the end of the admittedly compelling song, Positively 4th Street:

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you.

Oof! The highlighted lyric is rude, impolite. We don't recommend taking such attitudes toward others, or even toward Others. We don't even recommend that!

On the other hand, we're willing to say that our own attitude has perhaps been somewhat similar of late. First, though, a bit of background on Dylan's compelling song. 

"You'd know what a drag it is to see you," Dylan said at the end of the song. But who the heck was he talking about? Who was the bête noire of this song?

Who was Dylan deriding? In the passage shown below, the leading authority on the song offers a set of speculations, along with some basic facts:

"Positively 4th Street" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, first recorded in New York City on July 29, 1965. It was released as a single by Columbia Records on September 7, 1965, reaching No. 1 on Canada's RPM chart, No. 7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and No. 8 on the UK Singles Chart. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song as No. 203 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

[...]

The song is generally assumed to ridicule Greenwich Village residents who criticized Dylan for his departure from traditional folk styles towards the electric guitar and rock music. Many of the Greenwich Village folk crowd, who had been good friends of Dylan's, took offense and assumed that the song carried personal references. Noted Village figure Izzy Young, who ran the Folklore Center, had this to say of the accusation:

"At least five hundred came into my place [the Folklore Center] and asked if it was about me. I don't know if it was, but it was unfair...Dylan comes in and takes from us, uses my resources, then he leaves and he gets bitter. He writes a bitter song. He was the one who left."

Other possible targets of the song's derision include Irwin Silber, editor of Sing Out! magazine and a critic of Dylan's move away from traditional folk styles, and Tom Paxton, who had criticized the emerging folk rock scene of the period in a Sing Out! magazine article titled "Folk Rot" (although Dylan wrote and recorded "Positively 4th Street" months before the "Folk Rot" article was published in January 1966). Michael Schumacher, in his book There but for Fortune: The Life Of Phil Ochs, claimed that Phil Ochs might be the target because Dylan got angry at Ochs for his criticism of the song "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", which supposedly prompted Dylan to throw Ochs out of his limousine (though Dylan wrote and recorded "Positively 4th Street" months before this incident occurred in September 1965). Another possibility is that "Positively 4th Street" (along with "Like a Rolling Stone") was directed at Edie Sedgwick and her association with Andy Warhol, though this seems very unlikely as Dylan recorded this song before his involvement with Sedgwick had turned sour. 

In classic human fashion, the leading authority names three "possible targets of the song's derision"—Paxton, Ochs and Sedgwick/Warhol—even as it notes the fact that these three speculations don't make chronological sense!

We human beings are strongly inclined to "reason" in such ways. We're even inclined to reason that way over here in our own liberal tribe!

We reason that way every day of the week. That leads us to our own brand-new decision.

In the course of this week, we had intended to deride certain aspects of our own's tribe's persistent behavior. In effect, we were reworking Dylan's closing lines, transforming them into this:

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see Us.

For us at this site, it is a drag, each weeknight evening and then every morning, to review the way our own failing tribe novelizes the day's alleged news events. On "cable news," the current play list goes something a great deal like this:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Tump Trump Trump Trump Trump Giuliani

Granted, this amazingly tedious product line sells. But in such ways, our self-impressed tribe keeps losing elections, and with those elections the world.

Routinely, our tribe is deeply unimpressive—and, like almost all human tribes, we're almost completely unable to grasp this obvious fact. That said, do you have any idea how depressing it is to move along, day after day, deriding the very folks who vote the same way you do?

It easy and fun to go after Others, perhaps with embellishment added. For that reason, it's quite widely done.

On cable, it leads major stars to very large paydays. But deriding one's own is no fun!

For those reasons, we're taking the day off from this week's planned report. Tomorrow, we'll summarize the issue which lay at the heart of the topic—but after that, the change!

Yesterday, we finally decided that we can't take it any more. All in all, our view at present is this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our own tribe is hopelessly limited. Our analytical skills barely exist. We aren't always the world's nicest people.

That unwise, ugly reference to East Bumfuck County pretty much did it for us. That, plus the ugly comments the reference occasioned as the creepy crawlers of our own tribe slithered out of the woodwork!

If you aren't appalled by behavior like that, we'll suggest that you step aside for a while and take stock. You might consider the amazingly basic assessments offered in Professor Belsky's letter, as described in yesterday's report.

At present, the behavior which comes from the world of Trump is routinely insane. But within our own self-impressed tribe, our reactions tend to be unpleasant, and they tend to be notably dumb.

Here in our tribe, we have almost no observable skills; despite that, we're quite self-impressed. We expect to adopt a new approach to these problems next week, though we offer this brutal disclaimer:

Experts say this will never change. Channeling Sartre, these scholars all say that there seems to be "no way out!"

Tomorrow: Actually, no. We don't think The Others actually said that...