People Should Stop Saying Mean Things About Bob Dylan

“I never liked him. He seems sort of unpleasant and uncomfortable.”
 — Bill “Smog” Callahan, in the (subscription-only) New Yorker, on Bob Dylan, who is having a tough week in the press. This kind of blows my mind. I mean, sure, I guess Dylan can come across that way. Like, his personality. It’s been noted before. Lou Reed once said, “If you were at a party with him, I think you’d tell him to shut up.” But still, he’s the best at what he does, and it hurts me a little to hear other songwriters snipe like that. Though when Maureen Dowd (and/or whichever one or more of her friends wrote her column on Sunday) calls you a sell-out and a hypocrite and an idiot, that might be easily taken as a compliment.