Bob Dylan versus the philistines – Issue XXII
The babyish tantrum-mongers have convinced the world that their outbursts are the embodiment of civil rights courage, so that anyone who expresses any doubt about the official version of 'trending' case is treated as an apologist for evil itself.
This is an excerpt of an article that features in our 22nd print issue.
This unholy alliance between pious and correct-thinking scribblers and their blood-lusting readers is yet another amusing connection between the news culture of the end of nineteenth century and the churnalism of our own. Except perhaps, that now, it is also the earnest and thoughtful reader, the well-educated consumer, who joins in the savagery and gluttony for scandal because it can be dressed up as questing fo social justice.
Nowhere was all this vulgar piety more on display than in the recent news cycle around allegations of sex abuse against Bob Dylan. Everyone in a free society must support the process of justice and accept what that means. However, the temptation to bite at the first sight of blood was just too much for our media class, who joyfully hailed this as the beginning of a new #MeToo moment.
As John Nolte of Breitbart wrote in a rare example of a dissenting piece on this issue, the allegations were carried without even a hint of critical thought or desire to interrogate facts. It has since transpired that the the timing of when the alleged attacks were said to have taken place does not quite add up, and even if you think it does, the truth of Bob Dylan's schedule at the time in question does bare consideration and invite sober doubts.
Despite this, on came the snotty think pieces in Times2 and in MailOnline, which tied these allegations into a bigger cultural movement of comeuppance, as if any scandalous accusation is automatically a victory for voiceless abuse victims everywhere, and a message to those pale, wrinkly old boomer icons that their place in the pantheon can and will be reversed by the guardians of moral and sexual propriety.
Whether Bob Dylan is innocent or not is not the point here. What is obvious is that we live in a philistine culture which celebrates power and success only for the thrill of seeing it reversed in some moral soap-opera. Our airwaves are filled with taglines and catchphrases and soundbites about 'living creatively' and how we must 'be the author of our own lives', or 'find our passion' and mobilise our 'content marketing' in order to 'achieve independence' or 'shape the legend of our lives'. What all this advertising pablum betrays, in fact, is a hatred of true art, a contempt of actual artists. For when one unconfirmed crime is even hinted at, our supposedly creative, media elites leap at the chance to condemn the bohemians or the free thinkers, and to weaponise the incident as a warning to anyone else who might have ideas of living a self-determined life. No one is safe. Be scared.
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