Something is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Dowd?

I was going to post over the weekend on the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist's decision, during a week in which the House GOP was holding, literally, millions of women's lives hostage over a few billion more in spending cuts, to use her column to accuse Dylan of "selling out" to repression in China. But I sighed and took my "yard waste" to the local dump instead.

In hindsight, that seems like a good decision, since James Fallows and his correspondents who actually know something about China and Bob Dylan, are corrosive.

>>Check out the Beijing set list - he played A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall and Ballad of a Thin Man - those tunes are as "subversive" as anything he has written, and frankly, better tunes than his "protest" songs (The Times They Are A Changing). http://www.boblinks.com/040611s.html

What does Maureen Dowd want from Dylan exactly, and what evidence does she have that he altered his set list? He doesn't speak at concerts, the set list changes daily, and again, Gonna Change My Way of Thinking which opened both China shows, and Desolation Row from Shanghai are more thumb-in-your eye than Blowin in the Wind. http://www.boblinks.com/040811s.html

Dylan closed both China shows with Like A Rolling Stone (as he does all his shows). If the Chinese were really intent on shutting Dylan down, wouldn't they have crossed out that tune from the set list?

Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, from Slow Train Coming, opens with this lyric:

Gonna change my way of thinking
Make myself a different set of rules
Gonna change my way of thinking
Make myself a different set of rules
Gonna put my good foot forward
And stop being influenced by fools

So much oppression
Can't keep track of it no more
So much oppression
Can't keep track of it no more

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/gonna-change-my-way-of-thinking

It's from Dylan's so called "born again" phase, but do you think the Chinese were hip to that lyric? Something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Maureen Dowd?<<

And, no, I don't link to Dowd. Sorry, but you'll have to pay for the "privilege," assuming you've maxed out your NYT.com page views.

To add to the fun, I've been to many, many Dylan shows in recent years. I recall very few times that he's performed anything from A Slow Train Coming.