The New York Times is no longer taking comments about Maureen Dowd's most recent column criticizing Bob Dylan for playing a Chinese government-approved set in Beijing. This means no one may ever read my thoughts on the matter, but I'll share them anyway:
It's a testament to the power of Dylan's music that, 50 years on, people are still trashing him for not being someone he never claimed to be.
If Dowd wants ideological consistency—politics in lockstep with poetry—there are other talented figures from the '60s protest movement to look to. Phil Ochs, for instance, whom Dylan is said to have told, "You're not a folksinger. You're a journalist." That the fiercely political Ochs has, over the years, inspired far fewer listeners to political action than Dylan, who is loyal only to his own artistic compass, should give her pause, however.
If Dylan weren't Dylan—iconoclastic, inconsistent, maddingly (to some) disloyal to cultural movements he helped shape—we would never have had more than the tousle haired Kennedy-era folkie he was in 1963, singing music forever associated with a particular time and place. He might today be a Civil Rights Era footnote, no more or less intriguing to people in China than, say, Peter Paul and Mary (which is to say, not very). His first heresy was to pick up the electric guitar, which in retrospect sealed his message as timeless, to be revisited and reinterpreted by each successive generation.
The music of Bob Dylan has and will continue to inspire people the world over, and his appearance in Beijing, however impolitic, will do the same for the Chinese—whether Maureen Dowd likes it or not.
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