Dear landlord,
Please don't put a price on my soul.
My burden is heavy,
My dreams are beyond control.
Who exactly is the enigmatic ‘landlord’ to whom this downtrodden tenant is pleading for spiritual respect and financial relief? If you're not quite sure, don't think twice. It turns out the mystery of his (or her?) identity has been a focal point of speculation among Dylan fans for years.
Self-styled (and far more disgruntled) ‘Dylanologist,’ Al Weberman, argues that the song was inspired by the parasitic relationship between Dylan and his longstanding manager, Albert Grossman, which by 1967 had turned completely toxic.Others suggest Dylan wrote the song about his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, under whose roof he lived shortly after arriving in Greenwich Village in the winter of 1961. And still some maintain the ‘landlord’ is a metaphor for God.
This third school of thought may not been as over-reaching an analogy as one might expect. A
careful listen to the John Wesley Harding song cycle from Dylan's masterful 1967 album certainly suggests the seeds of Dylan’s ‘search’ were beginning to surface a full decade before the full-blown ‘spiritual conversion’ in the late 1970s.Few, however, think the ‘landlord’ is literal. And frankly, it’s hard to fault them. In the iconography of Dylan, little often is.
There is, however, a parallel here worth pursuing. And as with many parallels, the connection revolves around the intersection of two seemingly disparate eras.
Just as the halcyon days of the “Summer of Love” were starting to turn turbulent in 1967, so, too, is our nation today faced with similar uncertainty. And as we turn to the
figure at the center of that current downward spiral, we look not to Dylan, but rather to Barack Obama, whose self-appointed role as the pied piper of American politics does share one striking similarity with our fair Bob—he’s getting increasingly harder to pin down.In three short weeks, Obama has became the de facto head of the banking system, executive in charge of the automobile industry, and now, thanks to the passage of the $50 billion Homeowner Affordability and Stability plan last Wednesday, landlord to close to nine million Americans.
Interestingly, President Obama opted not to invite the expected litany of lackeys to
join him at the table last week in Mesa, Arizona, when he unfurled his solution to our nation’s housing crisis. Considering the lukewarm reception his $787 Economic Stimulus Package got from Wall Street, Obama’s unceremonious announcement was no doubt intentional.Chances are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won’t be rolling out the welcome mat when the president returns home, either. This ill-conceived and woefully underfunded plan stinks to high heaven, and neither Pelosi nor Reed want the crap Obama is going to take for it tracked all around their new House.
It's no secret Obama’s solution to the mortgage crisis will likely tack on an additional $200 billion to the $75 billion the president allocated to his
mortgage relief plan. But Obama had to do something. We have to shore up housing prices, stabilize neighborhoods and slow a downward spiral that has “unraveled homeownership, the middle class and the American Dream itself.” To that end, the Obama plan will provide relief to millions of Americas.At the cornerstone of the Homeowner Affordability and Stability plan resides a $75 billion program to subsidize loan modifications that will reduce a family’s
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monthly payment to as little as 31 percent of their gross monthly income. To incentivize lenders to lower these monthly payments, the government will do two things. First, they will pay the lenders $1,000 for every modified loan, more if the borrower stays current on their payments. Additionally, if the lender gets the monthly payments down to 38 percent of the borrower’s monthly income, the government will match, dollar for dollar, additional reductions to bring the payment to the targeted 31 percent of monthly income.And while this plan is a valiant attempt to solve the right problem, the problem is being solved for the wrong people.
House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio certainly thinks so.
In the days leading up to the signing of the plan, Boehner asked a very
insightful, albeit incendiary question: "Does the plan compensate banks for the bad mortgages they should never have made in the first place?" The answer, of course, is a resounding, “No,” as is evidenced in the $1,000 ‘incentive’ the lenders will receive to refinance the toxic loans.But it was Boehner’s second question that truly hit the mark: "Will individuals who misrepresented their income or assets on their original
mortgage application be eligible to get taxpayer-funded assistance?" Right now it seems Barack Obama, the man who to promised to deliver the maligned middle class from their current financial morass, can’t be bothered with the annoying question of how to align honesty with home ownership.To his credit, Obama’s plan does address the nagging concern of accountability
—something that was conveniently swept under the rug when the banks and automakers were handed their bailout bonanzas. But in his haste to assuage those Americans who got in over their heads, Obama has betrayed the first rule of feudalism—a system to which he seems determined to allow our country to revert—and that rule is this: A landlord should never give the tenants the upper hand.Perhaps Obama should have borrowed a page from Dylan—always keep them guessing.
Because once you let them in, you just might be the one who ends up out on your ass…Dear landlord,
Please don't dismiss my case.
I'm not about to argue,
I'm not about to move to no other place.
And while it’s pure speculation (and what isn’t speculative when it comes to Dylan), it’s probably safe to say Bob was feeling a mite maudlin when he sat down to write would eventually become one of his most enduring compositions.
Written as a heartfelt, almost hymnal homage to his son, Jakob, “Forever Young” has stood the test of time— an enduring rumination on the eternal, indomitable spirit of youth.
all), you realize the song isn’t as much about youth in a literal sense as it is about the boundless promise of what the future holds in store. Said another way, it’s a song about forging one’s identity. And if you can look at the song from that perspective, the seemingly sentimental “Forever Young” isn’t as much about sage, sanguine advice passed on from a father to his son as it is an acknowledgment that we need not wait for a new generation to refresh the world. That power resides in all of us, if we just find the courage and strength to tap into it. Which brings us to the ad Pepsi ran on the Super Bowl two weeks ago...
The concept of affecting change and embracing it are often thought to be analogous and interchangeable. The reality, however, is that these are two distinct and disparate ideas. To mix them up (or ‘mash them up’ as the case was with the Will.i.am-Bob Dylan ad) does a great disservice to those who are true agents of change, and those who are merely ‘catching the wave’ (to borrow the slogan from another pop soda that portends to be one beat ahead of the generational curve).
has never gone as far as to sell flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark, he’s certainly done his part conning us into thinking we’re the one. Cadillac, Victoria’s Secret and Apple are just a few of the products to which Dylan has lent his irrepressible, iconic image.
for the Obama campaign in which celebrities espouse their unwavering admiration for Barack Obama while the Black Eyed Peas front man be-bops in the background is one of the most innovative and infectious political endorsements in recent memory. The fact the video was directed by Jesse Dylan, another one of Bob's young brood, just adds to the irony of this grunt.
his—something that was 
Pepsi malign his pop persona the way they did. And, in all fairness, he does bear some culpability. We all Bob knows exactly what deal’s going down.
daunting tasks—crafting his enduring music and cultivating his enigmatic image. There’s no question, he’s a master at both. For all we know, perhaps the Pepsi ad was just another piece in Bob’s ‘master plan.’ And when you think about it that way, the ad is almost forgivable. Almost.
The fault lies squarely with Will.i.am, who even at the height of his creative and cultural prowess during the presidential campaign was never an agent of change. At best, he was a conduit. In reality, he was nothing more than a beneficiary of it.
Yet despite the poor judgment on the part of Will.i.am, in the end he's got one major thing going for him. He’s still young…
Services, few, if any, Washington insiders blinked an eye. Not only is the former Senator from North Dakota one of the nation’s leading experts on health-care reform, he played a pivotal role in Obama’s rise from relative obscurity to his present perch atop the political heap.
Tom Daschle could have had just about any position in the Obama White House he wanted. And he made no bones about the fact he wanted to run Health and Human Services.
ensnare this administration (the third instance of an Obama appointee coming up short with Uncle Sam would be Nancy Killefer, who had been chosen by President Obama to be the Deputy Director for Management at OMB), Barack Obama accepted Tom Daschle’s withdrew his nomination for Secretary of HHS.
newly minted president more than precious political capital—it cost him a friend, a confident and political partisanship aside, probably the best man for the job. But perhaps most significantly, it severely tarnished the cult of personality that has transformed Barack Obama into one of the most recognizable, most revered and most worshiped people on the planet.
whom Obama has surrounded himself have de facto been lumped into that category as well. Not since John F. Kennedy blew into town a half century ago has the phrase, “the best and brightest,” been bantered around with more aplomb. But even rock stars are aware of the pitfalls of not giving the Man his shake.
tussled with the taxman. In the case of Willie Nelson, his run-in with the IRS cost him a pretty penny. $16.5 million in pretty pennies, to be exact. Ironically, the one rock star who has something to say on just about everything, has very little to opine on taxes.
But it’s getting increasingly difficult to jump on the Obama bandwagon when it seems the ‘best and brightest’ can even file a simple tax return…which brings us back to Tom Daschle’s recent tax blues.
unwittingly assumed the role of Icarus—brought down by the simmering, slow-burn animosity growing in this country toward politicians who think they can operate at a different standard (not to mention different tax bracket)—than the rest of us.
in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and wait with baited breath for a certain groundhog by the name of “Punxsutawney Phil” to emerge from his burrow. As weather folklore has it, if Phil fails to see his shadow, winter will end soon. If, however, it’s sunny and Phil does see his shadow, winter continues for another 6 weeks.
Well, my fellow Disgruntled Dylanologists, we need not wait. It just so happens Groundhog Day came early this year.
theirs this past Wednesday when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi emerged from the hallowed Capitol chambers and proudly announced the passage of the $819 billion economic stimulus package.
passage of the stimulus package (and it will pass in some form— that’s precisely what this whole debate is about) will not only define the Obama presidency, the programs the stimulus package will fund will define our nation’s priorities for generations to come.
over the cost. Nor is the debate so much over the programs themselves, either. Not the big ones, anyway. We all know our country’s infrastructure is in shambles, that our education system is a disgrace and that our ability to compete in technology is severely hampered by shoddy networks and a lack of adequate resources.
pork—those hidden programs the politicians put in to placate their political backers back home.
accountability will likely go a long way toward renewing a sense of trust and competency in our elected officials. The memory of the $700 billion that recently went to the shylocks on the Street who got their pound of flesh without having to account to a soul (accept perhaps their own— but that’s another grunt altogether) has proven far more enduring than the banks they so shamelessly ran into the ground.
years in the tortuous manner Bill Murray was forced to relive the same day over and over again until he recognized the errant ways of his past, there is no question the nation economic winter of discontent is still upon us.
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