Weird Al Yankovic parodies Bob Dylan’s “Gnomic Balderdash” rock poetry. Give Weird Al the Nobel Prize, too!

Hat tip to “Gnomic Balderdash” John Brewer.

A police helicopter flying over Glasgow, Scotland last Friday lost control and crashed into the roof of a crowded Irish pub, killing three on board and six customers. An additional 32 persons present in the bar were injured.

Apparently, free speech was also a casualty as Scottish newspapers subsequently reported that a teenage male was arrested on Sunday for posting “racist and sectarian comments” on an on-line social networking site.

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Meanwhile, French prosecutors announced today that preliminary charges of “public insult and inciting hate” were filed last month against Bob Dylan for comments made in the course of a Rolling Stone interview last year during which the singer-songwriter discussed race relations in America.

Curiously, the offended parties were the Croats. What Dylan said was:

If you got a slave master or [Klu Klux] Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.

By a curious coincidence, the Republic of France was also awarding Dylan the Legion of Honor around roughly the same time that French prosecutors were indicting him for hate speech.

“He not busy being born is busy dying”

Bod Dylan is 72 today. HuffPo.

Not a Obama fan?

The Independent reports on a less-than-warm White House appearance last February.

Most of his contemporaries have mellowed with age, but as he approaches his 70th birthday, Bob Dylan remains splendidly reluctant to embrace efforts to turn him into part of the fusty establishment he once railed against.

That, at least, is the experience of President Barack Obama, who has revealed that he was given what amounts to the bum’s rush by the musician when he visited the White House to perform at a concert celebrating the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

Dylan, 69, was “sceptical” about performing his protest song “The Times They Are A-Changin” to the assembled dignitaries at February’s event. And while most musicians who perform for the most powerful man in the world ask for a “meet and greet” during their visit, Mr Obama told Rolling Stone magazine that Dylan refused to even speak with him. “He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practising before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that.”

After performing, it was the same story. “He finishes the song, steps off the stage – I’m sitting right in the front row – comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin and then leaves. And that was it. He left. That was our only interaction with him.”

Mr Obama nonetheless described the experience as “a real treat,” adding: “That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little sceptical about the whole enterprise.”