Nick Gillespie on Bob Dylan's Chrysler Super Bowl Ad
During the Super Bowl, Bob Dylan's "buy American" ad for Chrysler provoked outrage from fans and critics alike. Nick Gillespie explains that the man behind "Like a Rolling Stone" is just doing what comes naturally:
Dylan is an artist that purposefully makes his fans uncomfortable, not out of anger or contempt for his audience, but out of an undiminished sense of adventure, exploration, and creativity. In this, Dylan is the polar opposite of the recently deceased and Pete Seeger, who famously wanted to cut Dylan's electricity at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and never, ever discomfited his fans (or the Comintern, for that matter) for a second. Where so many writers, filmmakers, artists simply repeat themselves or flatter their audience's sense of itself, Dylan is, after all these years, "still on the road/Heading for another joint."