All The President's Mendacity

Not that this is the first time it's been quoted, but "even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked"...

It was a Bob Dylan line that drew huge applause "live" at the time of Richard Nixon's downfall and which continues, like so much of Dylan, to be just as relevant now...

As does the more prosaic Watergate non-Dylan quotation: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

The "stand naked" line comes, of course, from "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", a gigantic song that covers far more than the frailty of presidents, and which – if any were needed – could supply justification for Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature.

At last...

I've been away... I'm back.

And what better way to write a new post than to hail Bob Dylan's being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - at long last!

The carping from those who don't get it has already started... but as the Poet Laureate of Rock 'N' Roll pointed out some time ago, something is happening and they don't know what it is.

Those who know and love Dylan and his work  - and know what it has meant to them on this long journey from the Sixties to here - will get it and will be overjoyed.