Document text
Guest Opinion: Our Nobel Prize winner’s relevance today Thursday Nov 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Ron Hertz As an English teacher who delighted in using Bob Dylan in the classroom, I was thrilled to hear of his receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. Anyone who studies his lyrics can see his obviously powerful poetic skills, including his ability to poignantly examine crucial societal issues. Some of his early masterpieces continue to be relevant today, as we struggle to understand why we’re still always fighting wars and why our culture remains so racially divided, as evidenced by the phenomenon of Donald Trump. Reaching maturity and peak popularity during the Vietnam War, Dylan expressed his contempt for war with immortal lyrics. Of course, there’s “Blowing in the Wind,” probably his most famous song, which includes images of people closing their eyes and ears to war’s horrors, and asks, “How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?” But even more powerful, I believe, is Dylan’s “Masters of War.” In that song, he paints a scathing portrait of industrial and political leaders — people like Dick Cheney and his Halliburton pals — who push for war, enriching themselves while others do the dying. Dylan’s voice seethes with anger: “You hide in your mansion while the young people’s blood flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud.” He wonders how supposedly God-believing people can so complacently facilitate so much needless killing: “Let me ask you one question: Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness? Do you think that it should?” Ultimately, Dylan’s great anti-war lyrics remain relevant, because tragically, we haven’t shaken this shameful, greed-infested addiction. Shame certainly has been the name of the game in this year’s presidential election, and again our Nobel Prize winner’s words seem timely. The phenomenal rise of Donald Trump has unmasked a dark, hateful side of our culture that Dylan sang about with anguish and compassion decades ago. When one watched a Trump rally, it was the rapturous response to his simplistic bigotry that’s most frightening. Trump’s passionate supporters, mostly all white and relatively uneducated, loved to hear their fearless leader rage ominously against dark-skinned immigrants or tear down our first black president. Seemingly senselessly, many Trump backers still believe Obama is secretly a Muslim socialist born in Kenya. How can one compassionately regard those who hold such ignorant and at least latently racist beliefs? Dylan answers that question in “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” He wrote the song after a poor shite Southerner assassinated black civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Dylan tried to understand the minds of ordinary Southerners, like the assassin, who fervently opposed ending racial segregation: “He’s taught in his school ... that the laws are with him to protect his white skin, to keep up his hate, so he never thinks straight ‘bout the shape that he’s in.” Similarly preying upon deep, long-held fears, Trump pumps up resentment for minorities, making his supporters pawns in a game they don’t really understand. In “Only a Pawn” and in many other songs, Dylan expresses deep compassion for people that others might judge rather harshly. In one amazing song, “Chimes of Freedom,” he imagines bells tolling for the freedom of a wide array of victims, including hapless soldiers, lonesome lovers, desperate prostitutes and “the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse.” Today and in the future, as we try to heal our country plagued by too many deaths, racial tensions, unnecessary wars, and overflowing prisons, our new Nobel Prize winner’s lyrics will continue to inspire and enlighten. — Ron Hertz lives in Ashland.