Hey, congrats Bob Dylan for winning the Nobel Prize in literature! We may not always be able to understand your wobbly voice, but people seem to like what you do and the prize committee says you “created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” so hip hip hooray.
Now’s probably a good time to mention how you played a role in the gay liberation movement, along with fellow fascinating weirdo Allen Ginsberg. It was called “Jimmy Berman (Gay Lib Rag),” and it’s about Ginsberg trying to date an 18-year-old. (He would have been in his mid-40s at the time.) So, that’s maybe not a fantastic premise for a gay liberation song, but we’re willing to hear it out.
If you listen to it (below) it sounds a bit like the childish Brian Wilson “Vegetables” song, only about drugs and sex. Here’s a sampling of the lyrics:
Eighteen-year-old Jimmy, the boy is my delight
Eighteen-year-old Jimmy, I love him day and night
Now I know I’m getting kinda old to chase poor Jimmy’s tail
But I won’t tell you other, love, it’d be too long a taleJimmy Berman, please love me, I throw myself at your feet
Jimmy Berman, I’ll give you money, oh, won’t that be neat?
Jimmy Berman, just give me your heart and yeah! your soul
Jimmy Berman, please come home with me, I would be whole
“We Shall Overcome” it isn’t, but hey not every liberation anthem can be a hit.
How about we take this to the next level?
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At any rate, now we have a Nobel Prize just one degree away from the timeless art of seducing teenagers.
Alistair Wiseman
Well, if Barack Obama can “win” a Nobel Peace Prize with no foreign policy achievements in less than 9 months from taking office, then Bob Dylan can certainly win a prize in Literature.
(After 7 years of Obama and his Administration, I wonder if the Nobel Committee will ask for the award back?)
ingyaom
@Alistair Wiseman: Good idea – then they can give it to Trump for NOT getting elected.
Eye of the Beholder
“Jimmy Berman, I’ll give you money, oh, won’t that be neat?”
So Bob Dylan isn’t just some whore trying to cheapen Jimmy Berman; pretending he won’t dump Jimmy straight off after taking his money for sex? Hopefully Jimmy Berman knew not to take Bob Dylan at face value. Mr. Dylan was only offering love as a lore. Quite frankly Mr. Dylan didn’t even want sex from the young lad, but what he wanted was far more sinister than the gay community has ever been willing to scrutinize.
barkomatic
I wouldn’t describe this as a gay liberation song. If I had heard this at the time, I might think that as a young gay guy all I could hope for is an old dude throwing money at me for sex. As an older guy, all I could hope for is to pay for it from an 18 year old. Nope, not a happy outcome.
Brian
It’s interesting that songs like this were written back then. It was an interesting, subversive time. None of the popular music acts today would write a song like this.
Music has gone backwards in the last 30 years, and most homosexuals lead comfortably numb lives totally devoid of subversiveness.
Lookyloo
test
Lookyloo
@Alistair Wiseman: – Regarding Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize:
It was really an award from the rational world to America for revealing we weren’t the petty war-for-oil jerks-to-everyone scoundrels we’d been seeming for for the last 6 years of the Bush admin – and Obama was our elected recipient because electing him gave the world hope we weren’t terrible-for-ever.
Lookyloo
test (boy this comment apparatus is wonky for me)
bobbyjoe
One of the tags Queerty gives this is “pederasty,” but the song is about an eighteen year old (which it repeats over and over again). Why, exactly, is Queerty helping foster the worst kind of gay slurs, linking a song toward someone who’s of age to child abuse?
ErikO
Ginsberg was predatory and disgusting and sexually abused young boys and teenagers, but so did Harvey Milk.
@bobbyjoe: Because Ginsberg sexually abused teenagers and young boys, and was a member of NAMBLA.
ErikO
Harry Hay and Oscar Wilde were also pederasts.
JoeyRamone
@ErikO: Don’t be jealous that no one wanted your tired child ass. (Or is that the wrong people wanted it–maybe that’s the problem.)
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HisServitude
thanks and thank/praise/bless/glorify God/Lord,
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